Billionaire DE Shaw’s Top 5 Stock Picks

2. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)

DE Shaw’s Stake Value: $1.6 billion

Percentage of DE Shaw’s 13F Portfolio: 1.36%

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 238

As of the second quarter, 238 hedge funds out of the 873 funds tracked by Insider Monkey held stakes in the company worth $62.5 billion while 251 hedge funds were interested in the tech company with a stake of $58.9 billion in the previous quarter.

In the Q2 2021 Investor Letter, Baron Opportunity highlighted MSFT. Here is what the fund said:

“Shares of Microsoft Corporation, a cloud-software leader and provider of software productivity tools and infrastructure, rose during the quarter following a strong earnings report highlighting solid demand for its broad product stack and continued momentum migrating its business to the cloud. Microsoft was a top contributor in the period because it trades at reasonable free cash flow and earnings valuations, has cloud and digital transformation tailwinds at its back, reported a solid March quarter, and beat Street expectations by a wide margin. Microsoft’s results continued to be strong across the board, with Azure cloud computing revenues up 46% in constantcurrency (“cc”) terms and commercial cloud bookings growth of 38% cc, the best in years. Microsoft also reported robust profitability growth, with operating income expanding 31% and GAAP earnings up 45%. We believe the company is well positioned for continued solid growth and profitability through market share gains as more companies look to transform and digitize their businesses as they move operations to the cloud.”