Forum Financial Management LP Grows Stock Holdings in Microsoft Corporation $MSFT

Forum Financial Management LP increased its position in Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) by 11.6% in the third quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 90,657 shares of the software giant’s stock after buying an additional 9,455 shares during the quarter. Microsoft accounts for 0.6% of Forum Financial Management LP’s portfolio, making the stock its 18th largest position. Forum Financial Management LP’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $46,956,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Several other large investors have also recently made changes to their positions in the business. Vanguard Group Inc. increased 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 worth $350,712,742,000 after purchasing an additional 13,691,572 shares during the period. State Street Corp raised its holdings in Microsoft by 1.1% during the 2nd quarter. State Street Corp now owns 299,196,519 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $148,823,341,000 after buying an additional 3,166,275 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its position in Microsoft by 2.0% during the 2nd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 179,001,751 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $88,714,256,000 after buying an additional 3,532,054 shares during the period. Norges Bank purchased a new position in shares of Microsoft in the second quarter valued at about $50,493,678,000. Finally, Northern Trust Corp raised its stake in shares of Microsoft by 16.1% during the fourth quarter. Northern Trust Corp now owns 83,787,746 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $35,316,535,000 after acquiring an additional 11,600,470 shares during the last quarter. 71.13% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of equities research analysts have recently weighed in on MSFT shares. Sanford C. Bernstein reiterated an “outperform” rating and issued a $641.00 price objective (down from $645.00) on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Thursday. Rothschild Redb lowered shares of Microsoft from a “strong-buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Tuesday, November 18th. Stifel Nicolaus set a $540.00 price target on shares of Microsoft in a research note on Thursday. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lowered their price objective on shares of Microsoft from $575.00 to $550.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a report on Thursday. Finally, Rothschild & Co Redburn reduced their price target on Microsoft from $500.00 to $450.00 and set a “neutral” rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, January 21st. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, forty have given a Buy rating and three have given a Hold rating to the company’s stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $597.73.

Insider Transactions at Microsoft

In other Microsoft news, CEO Judson Althoff sold 12,750 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, December 2nd. The stock was sold at an average price of $491.52, for a total value of $6,266,880.00. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer directly owned 129,349 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $63,577,620.48. This trade represents a 8.97% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through this hyperlink. Also, insider Bradford L. Smith sold 38,500 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction that occurred 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 sale, the insider directly owned 461,597 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $239,402,668.08. This represents a 7.70% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. Insiders have sold a total of 54,100 shares of company stock worth $27,598,872 in the last ninety days. Insiders own 0.03% of the company’s stock.

Trending Headlines about Microsoft

Here are the key news stories impacting Microsoft this week:

• Positive Sentiment: Large commercial deals and partnerships underpin continued demand — Microsoft landed a major cloud customer agreement (Perplexity, reported as a $750M deal), which demonstrates Azure can win sizable AI workloads and supports future revenue. Perplexity signs $750 million AI cloud deal with Microsoft
• Positive Sentiment: Long-term AI opportunity remains large — analysts and commentators note that potential liquidity events (e.g., an OpenAI IPO) and continued hyperscaler AI demand could boost infrastructure spending that benefits Microsoft’s cloud and services over time. Could A $1 Trillion OpenAI IPO Save The Day For Nvidia, Microsoft?
• Positive Sentiment: Backlog/RPO growth signals demand — Microsoft’s commercial remaining performance obligations (backlog) jumped materially year-over-year, implying multi-year contracted revenue tied to AI workloads. Microsoft demand backlog doubles to $625 billion
• Neutral Sentiment: Quarterly results were solid but mixed — MSFT beat on revenue and EPS (Q2 results) yet the company issued guidance and commentary that implied a modest moderation in Azure growth vs. prior quarter; the market is parsing growth vs. the cost profile. Microsoft Q2 earnings beat on top and bottom lines
• Neutral Sentiment: Options and sentiment flows amplify moves — unusually high call-option buying and heavy volume have increased intraday volatility and may accentuate both selloffs and snapbacks. Stock Of The Day: Is This The Bottom For Microsoft?
• Negative Sentiment: Investor backlash to capex and margin risk — the core negative: investors punished MSFT because AI capex jumped (reported ~$37.5B in the quarter) while Azure growth showed signs of slowing, raising doubts about near-term returns. That drove a sharp selloff and a big market-cap contraction. Microsoft tumbled 10% in a day and isn’t recovering premarket. Here’s why
• Negative Sentiment: Analyst cuts & guidance uncertainty — several firms trimmed price targets or flagged near-term Azure/margin risks, increasing downside pressure even as many maintain buy ratings longer term. These Analysts Slash Their Forecasts On Microsoft Following Q2 Results
• Negative Sentiment: Legal/investor scrutiny follows the shock drop — law firms have opened investigations and class-action notices have surfaced, which can keep sentiment fragile near-term. Microsoft Corporation Investigated on Behalf of Investors

Microsoft Stock Performance

Shares of MSFT opened at $430.29 on Friday. The company has a market cap of $3.20 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 26.91, a P/E/G ratio of 1.74 and a beta of 1.07. The business’s fifty day simple moving average is $475.83 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $499.71. Microsoft Corporation has a 12 month low of $344.79 and a 12 month high of $555.45. The company has a current ratio of 1.39, a quick ratio of 1.39 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.09.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, January 28th. The software giant reported $4.14 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.86 by $0.28. Microsoft had a return on equity of 32.34% and a net margin of 39.04%.The firm had revenue of $81.27 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $80.28 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the company posted $3.23 earnings per share. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 16.7% on a year-over-year basis. Research analysts anticipate that Microsoft Corporation will post 13.08 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Microsoft Dividend Announcement

The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, March 12th. Investors of record on Thursday, February 19th will be given 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 yield of 0.8%. Microsoft’s dividend payout ratio is 22.76%.

Microsoft Company 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).