Rocketing to a price of $370.28 during today's afternoon trading session, shares of Microsoft are still -7.73% below their average target price of $401.31. Could there be more upside potential for the stock? Analysts are giving MSFT an average rating of buy and target prices ranging from $285.0 to $450.0 dollars per share.
The market seems to share this optimistic view, since Microsoft has a short interest of only 0.5% (this is the percentage of the share float that is being shorted). Each short position represents an investor's expectation that the price of the stock will decrease in the future.
Short selling involves borrowing shares and then selling them at current market prices. In the successful version of the strategy, the shares are purchased at a lower price at some time in the future. The investor then returns the shares to the lender, and keeps the profit made on the sell/buy transaction.
Another way to gauge the sentiment on Microsoft is to look at the percentage of institutions that are invested in the stock. In this case, 73.2% of the shares are held by pension, mutual, and hedge funds, which shows that these institutions probably have strong confidence in the stock.
If institutions are invested in a particular stock, it shows in most cases that they have performed quality research and concluded that it is a good investment. In some cases, however, increases in institutional ownership could be a sign of a takeover attempt or proxy fight, which can actually injure share prices. Also, institutions are not infallible, and can certainly make miscalculations -- often with spectacular results.
Overall, there is mixed market sentiment on Microsoft because its an analyst consensus of some upside potential, a buy rating, a very low short interest, and an average number of institutional investors. Warren Buffett famously said that in the short term, markets are voting mechanisms, but in the long term, they are weighing mechanisms. This means that long term investors should be aware of a stock's fundamentals before committing.
Buffett was one of the fist investors to focus on free cash flow as a yardstick for a company's health. Here are MSFT's recent cash flows:
| Date Reported | Cash Flow from Operations ($ k) | Capital expenditures ($ k) | Free Cash Flow ($ k) | YoY Growth (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 87,582,000 | 28,107,000 | 59,475,000 | -8.71 |
| 2022 | 89,035,000 | 23,886,000 | 65,149,000 | 16.09 |
| 2021 | 76,740,000 | 20,622,000 | 56,118,000 | 24.06 |
| 2020 | 60,675,000 | 15,441,000 | 45,234,000 | 18.23 |
| 2019 | 52,185,000 | 13,925,000 | 38,260,000 | 18.63 |
| 2018 | 43,884,000 | 11,632,000 | 32,252,000 |
