Microsoft’s shift to the cloud pays off

Article Excerpt

MICROSOFT CORP. $61 (Nasdaq symbol MSFT; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 7.8 billion; Market cap: $475.8 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 5.6; Dividend yield: 2.6%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.microsoft.com) continues to gain from the shift to selling its software as a cloud-based subscription service. In its fiscal 2017 first quarter, which ended September 30, 2016, the company’s revenue rose 3.1%, to $22.3 billion from $21.7 billion a year earlier. Earnings gained 5.8%, to $6.0 billion from $5.7 billion; due to fewer shares outstanding, earning per share rose 8.6%, to $0.76 from $0.70. Microsoft’s cloud-based services let users store programs and files on remote servers using the Internet. Those services now contribute $13 billion to the company’s yearly revenue. That should expand to $20 billion by fiscal 2019. Microsoft has gained 15% in the past year, and now trades at 20.6 times its projected 2017 earnings of $2.96 a share. The company devotes a high 15% of its revenue to developing…