Dillon & Associates Inc. Raises Holdings in Microsoft Co. (NASDAQ:MSFT)

Dillon & Associates Inc. lifted its stake in shares of Microsoft Co. (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Rating) by 0.6% in the 4th quarter, HoldingsChannel reports. The institutional investor owned 13,840 shares of the software giant’s stock after purchasing an additional 87 shares during the quarter. Dillon & Associates Inc.’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $3,322,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A number of other institutional investors and hedge funds also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the business. Aaron Wealth Advisors LLC increased its stake in shares of Microsoft by 35,465.9% during the first quarter. Aaron Wealth Advisors LLC now owns 20,611,140 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $66,852,000 after purchasing an additional 20,553,188 shares in the last quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its holdings in Microsoft by 1.0% during the 3rd quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 634,238,715 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $147,714,197,000 after buying an additional 6,129,708 shares in the last quarter. Swiss National Bank lifted its holdings in Microsoft by 13.8% during the 1st quarter. Swiss National Bank now owns 30,893,155 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $9,524,669,000 after buying an additional 3,757,500 shares in the last quarter. Cottage Street Advisors LLC increased its position in shares of Microsoft by 17,734.7% in the 4th quarter. Cottage Street Advisors LLC now owns 3,763,300 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $1,351,000 after purchasing an additional 3,742,199 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Mitsubishi UFJ Kokusai Asset Management Co. Ltd. increased its position in shares of Microsoft by 73.8% in the 3rd quarter. Mitsubishi UFJ Kokusai Asset Management Co. Ltd. now owns 8,172,257 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $1,903,319,000 after purchasing an additional 3,471,095 shares during the last quarter. 69.15% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

A number of brokerages recently weighed in on MSFT. Stifel Nicolaus increased their price target on shares of Microsoft from $310.00 to $320.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Wednesday, April 26th. Guggenheim boosted their price objective on shares of Microsoft from $212.00 to $232.00 and gave the stock a “sell” rating in a report on Wednesday, April 26th. Macquarie upgraded shares of Microsoft from a “neutral” rating to an “outperform” rating and lifted their target price for the stock from $260.00 to $325.00 in a research report on Wednesday, April 26th. KeyCorp boosted their price objective on shares of Microsoft from $316.00 to $335.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Thursday, April 20th. Finally, Oppenheimer upped their price target on shares of Microsoft from $310.00 to $330.00 and gave the stock an “outperform” rating in a research report on Wednesday, April 26th. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have issued a hold rating and thirty-two have given a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Microsoft has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $323.28.

Insider Activity

In other news, CMO Christopher C. Capossela sold 5,081 shares of Microsoft stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, May 16th. The shares were sold at an average price of $312.54, for a total value of $1,588,015.74. Following the transaction, the chief marketing officer now owns 94,328 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $29,481,273.12. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. In other news, CMO Christopher C. Capossela sold 5,081 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, May 16th. The shares were sold at an average price of $312.54, for a total value of $1,588,015.74. Following the sale, the chief marketing officer now owns 94,328 shares in the company, valued at $29,481,273.12. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at this hyperlink. Also, CMO Christopher C. Capossela sold 5,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, May 9th. The stock was sold at an average price of $308.70, for a total transaction of $1,543,500.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief marketing officer now owns 105,206 shares in the company, valued at approximately $32,477,092.20. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold a total of 49,848 shares of company stock valued at $15,050,877 over the last 90 days. 0.03% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders.

Microsoft Price Performance

NASDAQ MSFT opened at $318.52 on Friday. The company has a 50 day simple moving average of $289.47 and a 200-day simple moving average of $260.55. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.22, a current ratio of 1.91 and a quick ratio of 1.88. The firm has a market capitalization of $2.37 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 34.51, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.77 and a beta of 0.93. Microsoft Co. has a 52-week low of $213.43 and a 52-week high of $319.04.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Rating) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, April 25th. The software giant reported $2.45 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $2.22 by $0.23. The firm had revenue of $52.86 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $51.01 billion. Microsoft had a net margin of 33.25% and a return on equity of 38.98%. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 7.1% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter last year, the firm earned $2.22 earnings per share. Equities research analysts predict that Microsoft Co. will post 9.66 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

Microsoft Announces Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, June 8th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, May 18th will be given a $0.68 dividend. This represents a $2.72 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.85%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Wednesday, May 17th. Microsoft’s dividend payout ratio is 29.47%.

Microsoft Profile

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Microsoft Corp. engages in the development and support of software, services, devices, and solutions. It operates through the following business segments: Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing. The Productivity and Business Processes segment consists of Office Commercial (Office 365 subscriptions, the Office 365 portion of Microsoft 365 Commercial subscriptions, and Office licensed on-premises), Exchange, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Office 365 Security and Compliance, and Skype for Business, Office Consumer, including Microsoft 365 Consumer subscriptions, Office licensed on-premises, and other Office services, LinkedIn, including Talent Solutions, Marketing Solutions, Premium Subscriptions, Sales Solutions, and Learning Solutions, Dynamics business solutions, including Dynamics 365, comprising a set of intelligent, cloud-based applications across ERP, CRM, Customer Insights, Power Apps, and Power Automate, and on-premises ERP and CRM applications.