Microsoft Co. (NASDAQ:MSFT) Shares Sold by Gould Capital LLC

Posted by Defense World Staff on Mar 17th, 2023

Gould Capital LLC trimmed its holdings in Microsoft Co. (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Rating) by 4.8% in the third quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 3,397 shares of the software giant’s stock after selling 170 shares during the quarter. Gould Capital LLC’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $791,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A number of other hedge funds also recently bought and sold shares of MSFT. ICICI Prudential Asset Management Co Ltd lifted its position in shares of Microsoft by 199.7% in the third quarter. ICICI Prudential Asset Management Co Ltd now owns 107,705 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $25,356,000 after purchasing an additional 71,769 shares in the last quarter. Seascape Capital Management increased its holdings in Microsoft by 41.9% in the third quarter. Seascape Capital Management now owns 2,908 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $677,000 after buying an additional 858 shares during the last quarter. Verity & Verity LLC grew its holdings in Microsoft by 6.4% during the second quarter. Verity & Verity LLC now owns 67,872 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $17,432,000 after purchasing an additional 4,081 shares during the last quarter. BlackDiamond Wealth Management Inc. grew its holdings in Microsoft by 9.2% during the third quarter. BlackDiamond Wealth Management Inc. now owns 7,751 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $1,943,000 after purchasing an additional 650 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Handelsbanken Fonder AB grew its stake in shares of Microsoft by 1.4% in the third quarter. Handelsbanken Fonder AB now owns 2,789,479 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $649,670,000 after acquiring an additional 37,545 shares during the last quarter. 69.15% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In

Several brokerages have recently issued reports on MSFT. BMO Capital Markets downgraded shares of Microsoft from an “outperform” rating to a “market perform” rating and lowered their price objective for the stock from $267.00 to $265.00 in a research note on Wednesday, January 25th. They noted that the move was a valuation call. Rosenblatt Securities reduced their target price on Microsoft from $285.00 to $275.00 and set a “buy” rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, January 26th. Cowen cut their price objective on Microsoft from $285.00 to $280.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a report on Thursday, January 19th. UBS Group set a $250.00 price objective on Microsoft in a report on Tuesday. Finally, Wolfe Research cut their price objective on Microsoft from $280.00 to $265.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, January 25th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, five have issued a hold rating and twenty-seven have assigned a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $285.58.

Microsoft Stock Performance

NASDAQ:MSFT opened at $276.20 on Friday. The stock has a fifty day moving average price of $251.22 and a 200-day moving average price of $245.45. The company has a market cap of $2.06 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 30.69, a PEG ratio of 2.33 and a beta of 0.92. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.24, a quick ratio of 1.89 and a current ratio of 1.93. Microsoft Co. has a fifty-two week low of $213.43 and a fifty-two week high of $315.95.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Rating) last released its earnings results on Tuesday, January 24th. The software giant reported $2.32 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $2.27 by $0.05. The firm had revenue of $52.75 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $53.17 billion. Microsoft had a return on equity of 39.87% and a net margin of 33.05%. The company’s revenue was up 2.0% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the prior year, the company posted $2.48 EPS. As a group, equities analysts anticipate that Microsoft Co. will post 9.34 EPS for the current fiscal year.

Microsoft Announces Dividend

The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Tuesday, June 6th. Investors of record on Thursday, May 18th will be given a dividend of $0.68 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Wednesday, May 17th. This represents a $2.72 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.98%. Microsoft’s dividend payout ratio is currently 30.22%.

Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, CMO Christopher C. Capossela sold 1,000 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction on Monday, February 13th. The stock was sold at an average price of $272.32, for a total transaction of $272,320.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief marketing officer now directly owns 116,362 shares in the company, valued at approximately $31,687,699.84. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through this link. In other Microsoft news, CMO Christopher C. Capossela sold 1,000 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Monday, February 13th. The stock was sold at an average price of $272.32, for a total value of $272,320.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief marketing officer now directly owns 116,362 shares in the company, valued at $31,687,699.84. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. Also, CEO Satya Nadella sold 4,767 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, February 28th. The shares were sold at an average price of $248.88, for a total value of $1,186,410.96. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 788,625 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $196,272,990. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 6,767 shares of company stock worth $1,728,111 in the last ninety days. 0.03% of the stock is owned by insiders.

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.