Christopher C. Capossela Sells 5,000 Shares of Microsoft Co. (NASDAQ:MSFT) Stock

Microsoft Co. (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Rating) CMO Christopher C. Capossela sold 5,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, May 9th. The shares were sold at an average price of $308.70, for a total value of $1,543,500.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief marketing officer now directly owns 105,206 shares in the company, valued at approximately $32,477,092.20. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink.

Microsoft Stock Down 0.7 %

Shares of MSFT opened at $310.11 on Friday. The company has a current ratio of 1.91, a quick ratio of 1.88 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.22. Microsoft Co. has a 12 month low of $213.43 and a 12 month high of $313.00. The stock’s 50 day moving average is $283.66 and its two-hundred day moving average is $257.98. The firm has a market cap of $2.31 trillion, a P/E ratio of 33.60, a PEG ratio of 2.75 and a beta of 0.93.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Rating) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, April 25th. The software giant reported $2.45 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $2.22 by $0.23. Microsoft had a return on equity of 38.98% and a net margin of 33.25%. The company had revenue of $52.86 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $51.01 billion. During the same period last year, the company earned $2.22 earnings per share. Microsoft’s quarterly revenue was up 7.1% compared to the same quarter last year. Analysts predict that Microsoft Co. will post 9.61 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Microsoft Announces Dividend

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Tuesday, June 6th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, May 18th will be given a $0.68 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Wednesday, May 17th. This represents a $2.72 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.88%. Microsoft’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 29.47%.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Microsoft

Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the company. Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its position in shares of Microsoft by 1.0% in the third quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 634,238,715 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $147,714,197,000 after acquiring an additional 6,129,708 shares in the last quarter. State Street Corp lifted its position in Microsoft by 0.7% during the third quarter. State Street Corp now owns 295,509,547 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $68,824,173,000 after buying an additional 1,951,554 shares in the last quarter. FMR LLC lifted its position in Microsoft by 0.8% during the first quarter. FMR LLC now owns 200,523,373 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $57,810,889,000 after buying an additional 1,537,712 shares in the last quarter. Price T Rowe Associates Inc. MD lifted its position in Microsoft by 0.3% during the second 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 buying an additional 556,020 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC lifted its position in Microsoft by 112,158.6% during the fourth quarter. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC now owns 150,187,424 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $36,017,948,000 after buying an additional 150,053,637 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 69.15% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of research firms have recently issued reports on MSFT. Wolfe Research increased their price target on Microsoft from $330.00 to $350.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research report on Wednesday, April 26th. Sanford C. Bernstein increased their price target on Microsoft from $280.00 to $322.00 in a research report on Monday, April 24th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. increased their price target on Microsoft from $305.00 to $315.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research report on Wednesday, April 26th. Evercore ISI increased their price target on Microsoft from $295.00 to $337.00 in a research report on Wednesday, April 26th. Finally, Morgan Stanley upped their price objective on Microsoft from $307.00 to $335.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a research note on Wednesday, April 26th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have assigned a hold rating and thirty-two have given a buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, Microsoft currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $323.28.

Microsoft Company Profile

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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.