BlackRock Fund Advisors recently announced the acquisition of new stake in Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT). The institutional investor has increased its shareholding in the Technology company by 0.59% to 342.96 million shares with purchase of 2.01 million shares. This fresh investment now brings its stake to 4.61% valued currently at $128.97 billion. In addition, Fidelity Management & Research Co raised its holdings by 4.57 million to 188.18 million shares. And Geode Capital Management LLC has lifted its position by 2.09% or 3.09 million shares – to 151.22 million shares.
Currently, there are 7.43B common shares owned by the public and among those 7.32B shares have been available to trade.
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Insiders at the company have transacted a total of 86 times over the past 12 months, according to data filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). 30 of these insider trades were purchases, accounting for 395,133 shares. Insider sales of the common stock occurred on 56 occasions, with total insider shares sold totaling 388,214 shares.
The top 3 mutual fund holders in Microsoft Corporation are Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF, Vanguard 500 Index Fund, and SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust. Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF owns 233.28 million shares of the company’s stock, all valued at over $87.72 billion. The company bought an additional 0.4 million shares recently to bring their total holdings to about 3.14% of the shares outstanding. Vanguard 500 Index Fund bought 0.4 million shares to see its total holdings expand to 181.49 million shares valued at over $68.25 billion and representing 2.44% of the shares outstanding. SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust sold -0.5 million shares to bring its total holdings to over 90.95 million shares at a value of $34.2 billion. SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust now owns shares totaling to 1.22% of the shares outstanding.
However, the script later moved the day high at 398.67, up 1.22%. The company’s stock has a 5-day price change of 3.65% and 20.77% over the past three months. MSFT shares are trading 6.02% year to date (YTD), with the 12-month market performance up to 69.06% higher. It has a 12-month low price of $230.68 and touched a high of $394.03 over the same period. MSFT has an average intraday trading volume of 26.45 million shares. The stock is trading above its simple moving averages at the SMA20, SMA50, and SMA200, as the current price level is off by 5.62%, 6.61%, and 18.60% respectively.
Institutional ownership of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) shares accounts for 72.10% of the company’s 7.43B shares outstanding. Mutual fund holders own 41.50%, while other institutional holders and individual stakeholders account for 6.34% and 30.87% respectively.
It has a market capitalization of $2963.02B and a beta (3y monthly) value of 0.90. The stock’s trailing 12-month PE ratio is 38.61, while the earnings-per-share (ttm) stands at $10.33. The company has a PEG of 2.50 and a Quick Ratio of 1.64 with the debt-to-equity ratio at 0.48. Price movements for the stock have been influenced by the stock’s volatility, which stands at 1.28% over the week and 1.35% over the month.
Analysts forecast that Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) will achieve an EPS of $2.78 for the current quarter, $2.65 for the next quarter and $12.95 for 2025. The lowest estimate earnings-per-share for the quarter is $2.72 while analysts give the company a high EPS estimate of $3.32. Comparatively, EPS for the current quarter was $2.32 a year ago. Earnings per share for the fiscal year are expected to increase by 14.87%, and 15.33% over the next financial year. EPS should shrink at an annualized rate of 15.42% over the next five years, compared to 35.37% over the past 5-year period.
Looking at the support for the MSFT, a number of firms have released research notes about the stock. Exane BNP Paribas stated their Outperform rating for the stock in a research note on January 18, 2024, with the firm’s price target at $471.
