Topic: How To Invest

Dividend Advisor Hotline – Friday, June 15, 2018

Article Excerpt

MICROSOFT CORP., $100.13, Nasdaq symbol MSFT, last raised its quarterly payment by 7.6% in December 2017, to $0.42 a share from $0.39. The new annual rate of $1.68 yields 1.7%. The company will now buy GitHub. It operates a website that lets computer programmers share code and collaborate on software projects. GitHub currently has over 28 million users. Microsoft will pay $7.5 billion in stock for that privately held firm. To put that cost in context, Microsoft’s market cap (the total value of all outstanding shares) is $769.3 billion. It expects to complete the purchase by the end of 2018. Buying GitHub will help the company improve its cloud computing operations. They let users access programs online instead of buying software as a one-time purchase. However, many software developers worry that Microsoft will block them from accessing some of GitHub’s data. They also fear the company may analyze GitHub’s traffic to identify new trends in the software industry and launch competing products. Those factors…