“The stock market has never been the same since Microsoft lost its title as the bully of the tech sector. And as hard as it is for me to say, it’s time to stop calling the company a ‘sleeping giant’ – expecting it to suddenly awaken,” Richard Saintvilus reports for The Motley Fool. “The body has been motionless for too long. And if the company’s Q1 earnings revealed anything at all – it’s time to call the coroner.”
“The company didn’t get its fiscal 2013 started on the right foot. The software giant disappointed investors yet again by posting net income of $4.47 billion, or 53 cents per share, on revenues of $16.01 billion – missing both top and bottom line estimates,” Saintvilus reports. “Not only did revenues decline by 8%, but the company managed to shed 22% in profits.”
Saintvilus reports, “With plummeting PC sales projected to reach the teen percentage points by the second half of the year, things are only going to get worse… Essentially, as Microsoft is losing its position to Apple in consumer electronics, the company is also being skipped over in the enterprise by a more nimble Oracle, which has been on a shopping spree… Microsoft is in trouble with consumers and in the enterprise. Unfortunately, despite these facts management believed that increasing the dividend was the best use of its capital. If that is not a sign of ‘throwing its hands in the air,’ I don’t know what is.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “GetMeOnTop” for the heads up.]
