Microsoft was able to hit the trillion-dollar value mark on Thursday for the very first time and became the third technology giant to reach this symbolic milestone. Shares in Microsoft collected some five per cent to $130.59 in the early Wall Street trade following a healthy earnings report a day before.
This led to Microsoft enjoying a market capitalization of over $1 trillion before dipping back a bit. At the existing levels, Microsoft is the most valuable company in the world. It is currently ahead of Apple and Amazon that were able to top the $1 trillion mark last year and then slipped back.
On Wednesday, Microsoft stated that the profits in the quarter to March 31 were up by 19% to $8.8 billion on revenue of $30.8 billion. This is an increase of 14% from the same period last year. Why did the results do so better as opposed to last year? That is because of growth in cloud computing and business services that are serving as the new focus for Microsoft as opposed to being a leader in the consumer software.
Daniel Ives of Wedbush Securities said, ‘This quarter was an absolute ‘blow out quarter’ across the board with no blemishes and in our opinion speaks to an inflection point in deal flow as more enterprises pick (Microsoft) for the cloud. While the stock has been very strong and a trillion dollar market cap is now reached, we believe the cloud party is just getting started in Redmond.’
Microsoft sure has come a long way and is doing a terrific job at making sure that it remains relevant in the market and continues to go grow as a company. What are your fondest of the Microsoft? Is it the opening tune of Windows 98 or Windows XP? Who here misses the Microsoft Word assistant? Do let us know what you think!