Tech giants pivot to more-profitable products

Article Excerpt

These two U.S.-based tech leaders continue to shift to new fields as demand for their legacy products decline. Those moves are starting to pay off in the form of higher earnings and stock prices. Their success will also give them more cash to keep raising their dividends. MICROSOFT CORP. $102 (Nasdaq symbol MSFT; High-Growth Dividend Payer Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 7.7 billion; Market cap: $785.4 billion; Dividend yield: 1.6%; Dividend Sustainability Rating: Highest; www.microsoft.com) is the world’s largest software company. Its Windows operating system powers about 90% of the world’s personal computers. The company began paying regular dividends in 2004. It last raised the quarterly payment by 7.6% in December 2017, to $0.42 a share from $0.39. The annual rate of $1.68 yields 1.6%. Most of Microsoft’s recent growth stems from its 2014 decision to focus on cloud-computing services. In the three months ended March 31, 2018, Microsoft’s revenue rose 15.5%, to $26.8 billion from $23.2 billion a year earlier. The company earned $7.4…