Cowen Cuts Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) Price Target to $280.00

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Rating) had its price objective decreased by investment analysts at Cowen from $285.00 to $280.00 in a report issued on Thursday, The Fly reports. The firm currently has an “outperform” rating on the software giant’s stock. Cowen’s price objective points to a potential upside of 16.56% from the company’s previous close.

Other equities research analysts have also issued reports about the company. Piper Sandler lowered their price objective on Microsoft from $265.00 to $247.00 and set an “overweight” rating on the stock in a research note on Monday, January 9th. Oppenheimer lowered their price objective on Microsoft from $275.00 to $265.00 in a research note on Wednesday, October 26th. The Goldman Sachs Group set a $315.00 price objective on Microsoft in a research note on Tuesday. Jefferies Financial Group set a $270.00 price target on Microsoft in a research report on Thursday, January 5th. Finally, Rosenblatt Securities decreased their price target on Microsoft from $300.00 to $285.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, October 27th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have assigned a hold rating and twenty-nine have given a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Microsoft currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $287.88.

Microsoft Trading Up 3.6 %

Shares of MSFT opened at $240.22 on Thursday. Microsoft has a 12-month low of $213.43 and a 12-month high of $315.95. The company has a quick ratio of 1.79, a current ratio of 1.84 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.26. The firm has a market capitalization of $1.79 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 25.89, a P/E/G ratio of 2.35 and a beta of 0.94. The stock’s 50-day moving average price is $241.70 and its 200 day moving average price is $250.10.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Rating) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, October 25th. The software giant reported $2.35 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $2.29 by $0.06. Microsoft had a return on equity of 42.10% and a net margin of 34.37%. The firm had revenue of $50.12 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $49.70 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted $2.27 earnings per share. The company’s quarterly revenue was up 10.6% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, research analysts predict that Microsoft will post 9.52 earnings per share for the current year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Microsoft news, EVP Judson Althoff sold 24,144 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Thursday, December 1st. The stock was sold at an average price of $254.27, for a total transaction of $6,139,094.88. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president now owns 150,047 shares in the company, valued at approximately $38,152,450.69. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. Corporate insiders own 0.03% of the company’s stock.

Hedge Funds Weigh In On Microsoft

Several hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of MSFT. Aaron Wealth Advisors LLC lifted its stake in Microsoft by 35,465.9% in the 1st quarter. Aaron Wealth Advisors LLC now owns 20,611,140 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $66,852,000 after purchasing an additional 20,553,188 shares during the last quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its stake in Microsoft by 1.0% in the 3rd quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 634,238,715 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $147,714,197,000 after purchasing an additional 6,129,708 shares during the last quarter. Bishop Rock Capital L.P. lifted its stake in Microsoft by 11,434.2% in the 2nd quarter. Bishop Rock Capital L.P. now owns 5,460,976 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $21,263,000 after purchasing an additional 5,413,630 shares during the last quarter. Renaissance Technologies LLC acquired a new stake in Microsoft in the 2nd quarter valued at about $981,125,000. Finally, Swiss National Bank lifted its stake in Microsoft by 13.8% in the 1st quarter. Swiss National Bank now owns 30,893,155 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $9,524,669,000 after purchasing an additional 3,757,500 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 69.15% of the company’s stock.

About Microsoft

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Microsoft Corporation develops, licenses, and supports software, services, devices, and solutions worldwide. The company operates in three segments: Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing. The Productivity and Business Processes segment offers Office, Exchange, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Office 365 Security and Compliance, Microsoft Viva, and Skype for Business; Skype, Outlook.com, OneDrive, and LinkedIn; and Dynamics 365, a set of cloud-based and on-premises business solutions for organizations and enterprise divisions.