At the end of January, many companies reported their past quarter results, one of the companies was Microsoft. The average computer runs on their software but that is not where they make their money. In an article by Dina Bass of Bloomberg News Microsoft noted their was growth in their cloud computing services called Azure sales doubled as businesses seek to run applications and store data on Microsoft’s data centers. In this case, Microsoft biggest competition is Amazon.

In the tax bill, recently signed by the President, companies take a charge for taxes on the money the company has in non  American accounts. Microsoft has $128 billion in non American accounts and took a charge of about $14 billion. This charge needs to be paid within 8 years.

In Cloud computing, Amazon is still the leader, however a year ago it was a leader of 40 to 1, not the margin is closer to 3 to 1. This is good news for Amazon’s competitors and Microsoft which had a goal of $20 billion in revenue per year has surpasses their goal. Now companies such as Microsoft are offering greater ability to analyze the data including artificial intelligence.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, if you think about the FAANG group, Microsoft is not in the group and for long time it did not deserve to be in the group. The company has changed and that is why the shares have more upward. The company still churns out profits, but lately has added the growth aspect to its appeal.  It may take a little while longer, but when companies have dependent products or services which can generate an ongoing profitable business, eventually they will also be where the cutting edge is to.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.