A lot has been written about Microsoft’s stock resurgence under new CEO Satya Nadella and it looks like the positive coverage will continue into 2018 as investors bullishly look for cloud investments from major software brands going into the future.
According to a report from InvestorPlace, Microsoft’s stock resurgence can be credited to cloud focus as the company looks to take on industry giant Amazon.
Unlike Amazon, right now, Microsoft’s cloud approach is a multiprong strategy that extends into the enterprise, science, consumer storage, and gaming.
Perhaps more importantly, Microsoft has been quite successful with its enterprise version of Office 365 at keeping rivals at bay.
In addition to access to workplace staples like Excel and Word, Office 365 for business comes with access to programs/apps like Skype, Yammer, Teams, Power Bi and OneDrive. This is a whole suite of communications, chat, analytics and storage options in addition to the Microsoft software we all use.That has helped keep business from migrating to the Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) offerings. You’re going to buy/use Excel anyway, why not use Yammer instead of G Chat? It’s already included.
Meanwhile, this continues to drive more revenues into Microsoft’s coffers.
In 2017, Microsoft managed to produce $32.2 billion cash for the company as well as bring in $22.1 billion of net income.
Going into 2018, investors see Microsoft expanding on its wins from last year and turning, even more, enterprise seats into Azure clients as the company ties more services to its cloud.
Despite the slump in hardware sales last year, investors are also pretty bullish on Microsofts Surface sales as the company introduced a new mass-appeal ultrabook and refreshed two of its staple devices in the Surface Pro and Surface Book 2.
For investors, a 2018 Microsoft stock looks to be a solid investment.
