Company Update (NASDAQ:MSFT): Arista: Don’t Fear the SDN Hype, Says Pac Crest

[at Barrons.com] – Pacific Crest’s Brent Bracelin today pounds the table for shares of Arista Networks (ANET), whose stock has been weak the past week or so following more chatter about networking that uses software and commodity switching. For another thing, the announcement last week by Microsoft (MSFT) of software that can help run SDN, called “SONiC,” includes technology from Arista, writes Bracelin: Microsoft has outlined a role for third-party software and hardware components within the SONiC framework. Read more on this. Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) , currently valued at $429.71B, opened at $53.45. Today, shares have traded between $53.40 and $54.60 per share with a trailing 52-week range being $39.72 to $56.85. MSFT shares are currently priced at 19.23x this year’s forecasted earnings, which makes them relatively expensive compared to the industry’s 16.79x earnings multiple. And for dividend hunters, the company pays shareholders $1.44 per share annually in dividends, yielding 2.71%. Consensus earnings for the current quarter by the 29 sell-side analysts covering the stock is an estimate of $0.64 per share, which would be $0.03 better than the year-ago quarter and a $0.05 sequential decrease. Investors should also note that the full-year EPS estimate of $2.76 is a $0.30 better 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 $22.08 Billion. If realized, that would be a 1.61% increase over the year-ago quarter. More recently, Macquarie Initiated MSFT at Neutral (Mar 4, 2016). Previously, Morgan Stanley upgraded MSFT from Equal-Weight to Overweight. Investors should keep in mind is that the average price target is $58.55, which is 9.54% above where the stock opened this morning. See more in (NASDAQ:MSFT) Similar Articles: Company Update (NASDAQ:MSFT): Other than cloud, look for this on MSFT earnings Company Update (NASDAQ:MSFT): Microsoft: An Activist Investment Analysis (MSFT) Company Update: Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) – Microsoft (MSFT) Stock Up on New Financial Reporting Structure