Stock Update: Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) – Microsoft Earnings: Cloud Growth Shines Through As PC sales Play Spoil Sports

[at Forbes] – Microsoft announced its earnings for Q2 FY16 on January 28th. (Fiscal years end with June.) The company posted a 2% year-over-year decline in revenues to $25.7 billion though 0n constant currency basis revenues grew 3%. In our pre-earnings note, we noted that cloud services would boost revenues. The commercial cloud Read more on this. Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) , currently valued at $440.05B, opened this morning at $54.62. Looking at today’s market, MSFT one day range is $54.00 to $55.09 with the price of the stock fluctuating between $39.72 to $56.85 over the last 52 weeks. Priced at 18.93x this year’s forecasted earnings, MSFT shares are relatively expensive compared to the industry ’s 11.59x forward p/e ratio. And for dividend hunters, the company pays shareholders $1.44 per share annually in dividends, yielding 2.76%. According to a consensus of 27 analysts, the earnings estimate of $0.68 per share would be $0.07 better than the year-ago quarter and a $0.01 sequential decrease. What we find to be interesting is that the full-year EPS estimate of $2.75 is a $0.29 improvement when compared to the previous year’s annual results. The quarterly earnings estimate is based on a consensus revenue forecast of the current quarter of $22.33 Billion. If realized, that would be a 2.76% increase over the year-ago quarter. Recently, Morgan Stanley upgraded MSFT from Equal-Weight to Overweight (Jan 13, 2016). Previously, BMO Capital Markets Initiated MSFT at to Outperform. The average price target for MSFT shares by the analysts covering it is $57.94, which is 6.08% above where the stock opened. See more in (NASDAQ:MSFT) Similar Articles: Stock Update (NASDAQ:MSFT): Microsoft’s Earnings Are All About Cloud Momentum Stock Update: Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) – Analyst: 2016 will be a ‘206 area code street battle for the cloud’ and Microsoft could beat Amazon Company Update: Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) – Buy Microsoft Before Q1 Earnings: FBR