Nuance gives Microsoft AI depth

Article Excerpt

MICROSOFT CORP. $299 is a buy. The tech giant (Nasdaq symbol MSFT; High-Growth Dividend Payer Portfolio, Manufacturing sector; Shares o/s: 7.5 billion; Market cap: $2.2 trillion; Dividend yield: 0.8%; Dividend Sustainability Rating: Highest; www.microsoft.com) raised your quarterly dividend by 10.7% with the December 2021 payment, to $0.62 a share from $0.56. The stock has jumped about 30% in the past year, which is why the new annual rate of $2.48 yields just 0.8%. The company has now completed its acquisition of Nuance Communications Inc. (Nasdaq symbol NUAN) for $19.7 billion. Nuance makes artificial intelligence (AI) software for the health-care industry. For example, its voice recognition systems help doctors automatically capture discussions with their patients. That helps keep electronic medical records up to date. The AI software can also search for certain words in health records to make better suggestions to doctors for patient care. Microsoft is a buy. buy…