Microsoft Corporation $MSFT Shares Sold by Cottonwood Capital Advisors LLC

Cottonwood Capital Advisors LLC lessened its stake in Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) by 78.3% in the third quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 1,075 shares of the software giant’s stock after selling 3,884 shares during the quarter. Cottonwood Capital Advisors LLC’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $557,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

A number of other institutional investors have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Norges Bank purchased a new stake in Microsoft during the second quarter worth $50,493,678,000. Kingstone Capital Partners Texas LLC raised its stake in shares of Microsoft by 564,387.1% during the 2nd quarter. Kingstone Capital Partners Texas LLC now owns 90,549,369 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $45,040,162,000 after buying an additional 90,533,328 shares during the last quarter. Nuveen LLC acquired a new position in shares of Microsoft during the 1st quarter worth $18,733,827,000. Laurel Wealth Advisors LLC boosted its position in shares of Microsoft by 49,640.3% in the 2nd quarter. Laurel Wealth Advisors LLC now owns 29,967,038 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $14,905,904,000 after buying an additional 29,906,791 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Vanguard Group Inc. grew its stake in Microsoft by 2.0% in the 2nd quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 705,077,786 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $350,712,742,000 after acquiring an additional 13,691,572 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 71.13% of the company’s stock.

More Microsoft News

Here are the key news stories impacting Microsoft this week:

• Positive Sentiment: New AI and robotics announcements — Microsoft unveiled robotics/agentic AI initiatives and pushed further into agentic AI for retail and frontline use, boosting enthusiasm that its product roadmap will translate into revenue from AI workloads. Read More.
• Positive Sentiment: Defense cloud contract — Microsoft won a sizable Air Force Cloud One task order (~$170M) that validates Azure’s position in government/defense spending and provides a tangible near‑term revenue win. Read More.
• Positive Sentiment: Investor reassessment of valuation — After recent weakness MSFT is seeing a rebound as analysts and market commentators highlight Microsoft’s relative growth, profitability and balance‑sheet strength versus software peers. That sentiment helped the stock move back up today. Read More.
• Neutral Sentiment: Analyst reaffirmations and mixed targets — Several firms (Jefferies, Guggenheim, UBS) kept Buy ratings even as many groups trimmed price targets; that leaves a mix of support and pressure in the tape heading into earnings. Read More.
• Negative Sentiment: Multiple price‑target cuts and downgrades — A wave of target trims (Cantor Fitzgerald, Wells Fargo adjustments, Rothschild/Redburn cuts and other downgrades) is adding selling pressure and keeps expectations muted into the Jan. 28 earnings print. Read More.
• Negative Sentiment: Service outages and security/privacy headlines — Recent widespread Microsoft 365/Outlook outages disrupted customers and raised reliability concerns; separate reports about providing BitLocker recovery keys to the FBI introduce potential reputational/privacy scrutiny. Read More.

Microsoft Stock Up 3.3%

Shares of MSFT opened at $465.95 on Friday. Microsoft Corporation has a fifty-two week low of $344.79 and a fifty-two week high of $555.45. The company’s fifty day moving average is $478.69 and its two-hundred day moving average is $501.18. The firm has a market cap of $3.46 trillion, a PE ratio of 33.14, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.82 and a beta of 1.07. The company has a quick ratio of 1.39, a current ratio of 1.40 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.10.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) last issued its earnings results on Wednesday, October 29th. The software giant reported $4.13 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $3.65 by $0.48. Microsoft had a return on equity of 32.45% and a net margin of 35.71%.The business had revenue of $77.67 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $75.49 billion. During the same period last year, the company posted $3.30 EPS. The business’s quarterly revenue was up 18.4% on a year-over-year basis. Analysts forecast that Microsoft Corporation will post 13.08 earnings per share for the current year.

Microsoft Announces Dividend

The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, March 12th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, February 19th will be issued a dividend of $0.91 per share. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, February 19th. This represents a $3.64 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.8%. Microsoft’s payout ratio is presently 25.89%.

Insider Buying and Selling

In other news, EVP Takeshi Numoto sold 2,850 shares of the stock in a transaction on Thursday, December 4th. The shares were sold at an average price of $478.72, for a total value of $1,364,352.00. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president owned 55,782 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $26,703,959.04. This represents a 4.86% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. Also, insider Bradford L. Smith sold 38,500 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Monday, November 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $518.64, for a total transaction of $19,967,640.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the insider directly owned 461,597 shares in the company, valued at approximately $239,402,668.08. This represents a 7.70% decrease in their position. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. In the last quarter, insiders sold 54,100 shares of company stock valued at $27,598,872. 0.03% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.

Analyst Ratings Changes

MSFT has been the subject of a number of research reports. Raymond James Financial cut their target price on shares of Microsoft from $630.00 to $600.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, October 30th. HSBC increased their price target on shares of Microsoft from $643.00 to $648.00 in a research report on Monday, October 27th. Guggenheim restated a “buy” rating and set a $586.00 price objective on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Thursday. Stifel Nicolaus set a $640.00 target price on Microsoft in a research note on Thursday, October 30th. Finally, Royal Bank Of Canada reiterated a “buy” rating on shares of Microsoft in a report on Monday, January 5th. Three analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-five have assigned a Buy rating and three have issued a Hold rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, Microsoft presently has a consensus rating of “Buy” and a consensus price target of $618.18.

Microsoft Profile

Microsoft Corporation is a global technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Microsoft develops, licenses and supports a broad range of software products, services and devices for consumers, enterprises and governments worldwide. Its operations span personal computing, productivity software, cloud infrastructure, enterprise applications, developer tools and gaming.

Microsoft’s product portfolio includes the Windows operating system and the Microsoft 365 suite of productivity and collaboration tools (Office apps, Outlook, Teams).