Obermeyer Wood Investment Counsel Lllp reduced its holdings in Microsoft Co. (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Rating) by 1.6% during the 3rd quarter, HoldingsChannel.com reports. The institutional investor owned 253,359 shares of the software giant’s stock after selling 4,026 shares during the period. Microsoft makes up approximately 4.8% of Obermeyer Wood Investment Counsel Lllp’s holdings, making the stock its 3rd largest holding. Obermeyer Wood Investment Counsel Lllp’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $59,007,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.
Several other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also recently modified their holdings of MSFT. Monumental Financial Group Inc. purchased a new position in Microsoft during the first quarter worth about $28,000. Hanseatic Management Services Inc. increased its position in shares of Microsoft by 71.4% during the third quarter. Hanseatic Management Services Inc. now owns 132 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $31,000 after acquiring an additional 55 shares during the last quarter. Grayhawk Investment Strategies Inc. acquired a new stake in shares of Microsoft during the second quarter valued at about $104,000. Morgan Dempsey Capital Management LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Microsoft during the third quarter valued at about $82,000. Finally, Avondale Wealth Management increased its position in shares of Microsoft by 58.6% during the third quarter. Avondale Wealth Management now owns 406 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $95,000 after acquiring an additional 150 shares during the last quarter. 69.15% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.
Analysts Set New Price Targets
MSFT has been the subject of a number of recent analyst reports. Piper Sandler lifted their price target 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. Oppenheimer lifted their price target on shares of Microsoft from $265.00 to $280.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research report on Wednesday, February 8th. Mizuho lifted their price target on shares of Microsoft from $300.00 to $315.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday. Fundamental Research dropped their price target on shares of Microsoft from $269.73 to $259.47 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, February 2nd. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada restated an “outperform” rating and issued a $285.00 price objective on shares of Microsoft in a report on Friday. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, five have issued a hold rating and twenty-seven have given a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $286.05.
Microsoft Trading Up 1.2 %
Shares of Microsoft stock opened at $279.43 on Friday. The company has a fifty day simple moving average of $252.31 and a 200-day simple moving average of $245.55. Microsoft Co. has a 12-month low of $213.43 and a 12-month high of $315.95. 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 stock has a market cap of $2.08 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 31.05, a PEG ratio of 2.39 and a beta of 0.92.
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Rating) last issued 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. Microsoft had a net margin of 33.05% and a return on equity of 39.87%. The business had revenue of $52.75 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $53.17 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business posted $2.48 EPS. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 2.0% on a year-over-year basis. On average, equities analysts forecast that Microsoft Co. will post 9.34 EPS for the current fiscal year.
Microsoft Dividend Announcement
The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, June 8th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, May 18th will be issued a $0.68 dividend. This represents a $2.72 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.97%. The ex-dividend date is Wednesday, May 17th. Microsoft’s payout ratio is 30.22%.
Insider Activity
In related news, CEO Satya Nadella sold 4,767 shares of the stock in a transaction on Tuesday, February 28th. The shares were sold at an average price of $248.88, for a total transaction of $1,186,410.96. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 788,625 shares in the company, valued at approximately $196,272,990. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which can be accessed through the SEC website. In related news, CEO Satya Nadella sold 4,767 shares of the stock in a transaction on Tuesday, February 28th. The shares were sold at an average price of $248.88, for a total transaction of $1,186,410.96. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 788,625 shares in the company, valued at approximately $196,272,990. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Also, CMO Christopher C. Capossela sold 1,000 shares of the stock in a transaction on Monday, February 13th. The stock was sold at an average price of $272.32, for a total transaction of $272,320.00. Following the sale, the chief marketing officer now owns 116,362 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $31,687,699.84. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last quarter, insiders sold 6,767 shares of company stock worth $1,728,111. Corporate insiders own 0.03% of the company’s stock.
About Microsoft
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.
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