Aperture Investors LLC Has $8.69 Million Holdings in Microsoft Co. (NASDAQ:MSFT)

Aperture Investors LLC lessened its holdings in Microsoft Co. (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Rating) by 0.9% during the third quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 37,327 shares of the software giant’s stock after selling 350 shares during the period. Microsoft comprises 1.4% of Aperture Investors LLC’s investment portfolio, making the stock its 27th biggest holding. Aperture Investors LLC’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $8,693,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.

A number of other institutional investors and hedge funds also recently made changes to their positions in MSFT. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its position in Microsoft by 0.9% in the 1st quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 621,598,157 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $191,644,927,000 after purchasing an additional 5,648,095 shares in the last quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD grew its position in Microsoft by 0.3% in the 2nd quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD now owns 195,859,819 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $50,302,677,000 after purchasing an additional 556,020 shares in the last quarter. Legal & General Group Plc grew its position in Microsoft by 1.5% in the 2nd quarter. Legal & General Group Plc now owns 54,799,110 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $14,074,064,000 after purchasing an additional 784,656 shares in the last quarter. Massachusetts Financial Services Co. MA grew its position in Microsoft by 0.5% in the 3rd quarter. Massachusetts Financial Services Co. MA now owns 40,345,546 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $9,396,477,000 after purchasing an additional 215,103 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. grew its position in shares of Microsoft by 2.0% during the 1st quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. now owns 39,863,273 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $12,290,246,000 after acquiring an additional 766,487 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 69.15% of the company’s stock.

Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades

A number of research firms have recently weighed in on MSFT. Stifel Nicolaus reduced their target price on shares of Microsoft from $290.00 to $275.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, January 25th. DA Davidson increased their target price on shares of Microsoft from $280.00 to $325.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday, February 8th. Cowen reduced their target price on shares of Microsoft from $285.00 to $280.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, January 19th. Piper Sandler increased their target price on shares of Microsoft from $247.00 to $290.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Wednesday, February 8th. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada set a $285.00 target price on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Wednesday, January 25th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, five have assigned a hold rating and twenty-seven have given a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $285.58.

Insider Activity at Microsoft

In related news, CMO Christopher C. Capossela sold 1,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, February 9th. The shares were sold at an average price of $269.38, for a total transaction of $269,380.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief marketing officer now directly owns 117,362 shares in the company, valued at $31,614,975.56. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this link. In other Microsoft news, CMO Christopher C. Capossela sold 1,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, February 9th. The shares were sold at an average price of $269.38, for a total value of $269,380.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief marketing officer now directly owns 117,362 shares in the company, valued at $31,614,975.56. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, CEO Satya Nadella sold 4,767 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, February 28th. The stock was sold at an average price of $248.88, for a total transaction of $1,186,410.96. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 788,625 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $196,272,990. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last ninety days, insiders sold 6,767 shares of company stock worth $1,728,111. 0.03% of the stock is owned by company insiders.

Microsoft Stock Performance

Shares of NASDAQ MSFT opened at $248.59 on Friday. The firm has a 50 day moving average of $248.71 and a 200 day moving average of $245.53. The company has a current ratio of 1.93, a quick ratio of 1.89 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.24. The firm has a market capitalization of $1.85 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 27.62, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.32 and a beta of 0.92. Microsoft Co. has a 12-month low of $213.43 and a 12-month high of $315.95.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Rating) last announced its earnings results on Tuesday, January 24th. The software giant reported $2.32 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $2.27 by $0.05. The company had revenue of $52.75 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $53.17 billion. Microsoft had a net margin of 33.05% and a return on equity of 39.87%. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 2.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the business posted $2.48 earnings per share. On average, research analysts anticipate that Microsoft Co. will post 9.34 earnings per share for the current year.

Microsoft Company Profile

(Get Rating)

Microsoft Corp. engages in the development and support of software, services, devices, and solutions. It operates through the following business segments: Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing. The Productivity and Business Processes segment consists of Office Commercial (Office 365 subscriptions, the Office 365 portion of Microsoft 365 Commercial subscriptions, and Office licensed on-premises), Exchange, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Office 365 Security and Compliance, and Skype for Business, Office Consumer, including Microsoft 365 Consumer subscriptions, Office licensed on-premises, and other Office services, LinkedIn, including Talent Solutions, Marketing Solutions, Premium Subscriptions, Sales Solutions, and Learning Solutions, Dynamics business solutions, including Dynamics 365, comprising a set of intelligent, cloud-based applications across ERP, CRM, Customer Insights, Power Apps, and Power Automate, and on-premises ERP and CRM applications.