MSFT

[EricL]

Announced dividend increase and renewal of a huge stock buyback program.

http://seekingalpha.com/news-article/760...se-program

22% dividend increase from $0.23 to $0.28 and $40B buyback.

Should be good for a little pop today I'd think.

[ChadR]

Great news. Didn't predict the raise being this high. I figured they would extend/renew the dividend buyback program since it was about to expire.

[EricL]

Looks like the market is liking Microsoft's earnings.

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily...s&ru=yahoo

Up about 6% after hours.

Long here.

[TomK]

I don't own any MSFT, and am shy about tech generally, but some of the discussions here lately have had me reconsidering that. I was giving MSFT a high-level look earlier today, in fact. Guess I should have moved quicker!

[EricL]

(10-24-2013, 03:52 PM)TomK Wrote: I don't own any MSFT, and am shy about tech generally, but some of the discussions here lately have had me reconsidering that. I was giving MSFT a high-level look earlier today, in fact. Guess I should have moved quicker!

You still get a yield over 3%, a PE around 13 and double digit earnings and dividend growth.

Its not too late.

[fiveoh]

Liking it. Although I think it will drop to a 2-3% gain in reg trading tomorrow. Still a good quarter for MSFT. long MSFT as well.

[rapidacid]

Huge quarter for MSFT

Quote:The tech firm handed in earnings of 54 cents per share on revenue of $23.20 billion, beating Wall Street estimates of 49 cents per share on revenue of $22.02 billion, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters.

The company's devices and consumer revenue grew 47 percent to $10.96 billion, beating forecasts of $10.07 billion, according to StreetAccount.

Computing and gaming hardware sales increased by $1 billion or 74 percent, while phone hardware revenue exceeded $2.6 billion, versus StreetAccount expectations of $2.12 billion.

Commercial revenue totaled $12.28 billion, also topping estimates, with gains of about 10 percent. Its lower-margin commercial cloud business grew some 128 percent.

Investors cheered the upbeat results and the stock rose about 4 percent in after-hours trading.

[rapidacid]

As of 6/30/2014 MSFT had $35.1B still available out of its $40.0B share repurchase program.

They've decreased shared count by nearly 24% since 2004. $35B would decrease share count another ~9% at current prices.

[DividendDragon]

http://seekingalpha.com/article/2855886-...r-earnings

Very good article

[EricL]

According to my previous dividend announcement spreadsheet, MSFT is set to announce a new dividend either today or tomorrow.

My prediction is an 11.1% increase to $1.60, which would be a ~50% payout ratio on expected 2017 EPS of $3.22 and would give a forward yield of 2.8%.

Anyone else care to make a prediction?

[ChadR]

Being that I like round numbers I would predict $1.60, but to have something different I'll go with $1.59. Really hope you're right Eric.

[Rasec]

I don't know, what I know is that I should have jumped in when they announced the Linkedin deal, it was a good time to get in. That was about the same time I got into Apple which is proving to not be a bad bet either.