Microsoft and Satya Nadella to be tech standouts

Microsoft is the oldest of the current crop of technologies Goliaths, yet despite its roots in the bell-bottom days of 1975, the $2.5 trillion software maker has been a recent Big Tech standout in terms of share-price performance. Boss Satya Nadella is poised to work again, making him the most successful second-generation chief executive ever, measured by value created.

Apple has received a much larger increase in market value since officially taking over from Steve Jobs in 2011, but Nadella, who has had less time, is breathing down Cooks neck, when Steve Ballmer, an early employee of founder Bill Gates, took over in 2014.

Google is in the process of manufacturing and delivering the real-time FAANG shares for investors, with Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook), Apple, Amazon.com, Netflix, and Alphabet a preferred investment force. But Microsoft’s global return on MS stock over the year to Dec. 8 is second only to Alphabet, and it’s fourth only to Apple over three and five years.

According to Deutsche Bank, Gates’ middle-aged firm has plenty of energy left by 2020, despite the fact that it was the crown jewel known as Azure, Microsoft’s cloud-computing business. Amazon Web Services had a 65% market share in 2017, versus 20% for Azure and just 15% for Google’s offering.

Microsoft has historically gained momentum with business customers, as well as the resources to come from behind. It happened with the company’s Teams product after Slack Technologies developed the industry for workplace-chat software, and it could happen again with the idea of the so-called metaverse, beloved of Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg.

Between cloud computing, productivity, collaboration, and even gaming, Microsoft’s activities fit with powerful, global digital trends. Deutsche’s number-crunchers picked a target stock price thats over 15% above the company’s early December trading price, which could add another $400 billion to Nadella’s value-creation tally, and take him past Cook. Reuters