MSFTMicrosoft Corporation
Industry Megacap tech Updated 28 Sep 2026 Price 23 Oct 2026
If management hits its targets, one share in 12 months
$525 → $581
What the podcasts say
8 bullish · 2 bearish · 10 speakers · 7 showsWhat investors said about this company on the podcasts we transcribe, newest first. Bullish means the speaker expects the stock to do well, bearish means they expect it to do badly.
- Bullish
- Bullish
- Bullish
- Bullish
- Bearish
- Bullish
- Bullish
- Bullish
Promises vs. what happened
14 claims · 8 decksEvery target management put in a slide deck, and whether they hit it, missed it, or quietly dropped it.
| Promise | Made in | What happened | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Azure 31-32% in Q2 '25 | Q1 '25 | 31% — the low end, and the only Azure guide not beaten | Held |
| FY25 margins up slightly | Q2 '25 | up 1-2 points in three quarters of four | Held |
| Azure 34-35% in Q4 '25 | Q3 '25 | 39% — four points above | Held |
| FY26 margins unchanged | Q4 '25 | 46.8% against 45.7% — a point better | Held |
| Azure 39-40% in Q4 '26 | Q3 '26 | 43% | Held |
| Q4 '26 revenue $86.7-87.8B | Q3 '26 | $90.0B | Held |
| Q4 '26 capex over $40B | Q3 '26 | $41.0B, up 70% | Held |
| Cloud gross margin ~64% in Q4 '26 | Q3 '26 | 65% | Held |
| CY26 capex about $190B | Q3 '26 | about $175B a quarter later, called unchanged | Open |
| Azure accelerates in H2 FY27 | Q3 '26 | reframed to H1 '27 one quarter later | Open |
| Azure ~45% in Q1 '27 | Q4 '26 | reports Oct '26 | Open |
| FY27 margin down less than a point | Q4 '26 | the first guided decline in the set; open | Open |
| Intelligent Cloud $25.55-25.85B, Q2 '25 | Q1 '25 | $25.544B — $6M short | Missed |
| FY26 capex growth to moderate | Q4 '25 | $145.3B, up 65% — it accelerated | Missed |
What they’re pitching
the headline page, deck by deckThe headline from each quarterly results deck over two years, so you can see what they want you to focus on, and when it changes.
'25Q2
'25Q3
'25Q4
'25Q1
'26Q2
'26Q3
'26Q4
'26
AzureFirst seen Q1 '25
Cloud marginFirst seen Q1 '25
CapexNew Q4 '25 · Page one since Q3 '26
MarginPage one since Q4 '26
OpenAIOff page one Q4 '26
CurrencyPage one since Q3 '26
Revenue rangePage one since Q1 '26
on the headline page further in the deck not in the deck▲ onto page one▼ off page one● first mentionTap a mark for the quote.
Azure growth guide
“Growth of 31% to 32% in constant currency”
Deck Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2025 Outlook (FY25 Q1 call) · p. 4 (OCR) ·
Azure growth guide
“Growth of 31% to 32% in constant currency”
Deck Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2025 Outlook (FY25 Q2 call) · p. 4 (OCR) ·
Azure growth guide
“Growth of 34% to 35% in constant currency”
Deck Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2025 Outlook (FY25 Q3 call) · p. 4 (OCR) ·
Azure growth guide
“Growth of approximately 37% in constant currency”
Deck First Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Outlook (FY25 Q4 call) · p. 4 (OCR) ·
Azure growth guide
“Growth of approximately 37% in constant currency”
Deck Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Outlook (FY26 Q1 call) · p. 4 (OCR) ·
Azure growth guide
“Growth between 37% to 38% in constant currency”
Deck Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Outlook (FY26 Q2 call) · p. 4 (OCR) ·
Azure growth guide
“Growth between 39% to 40% in constant currency”
Deck Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Outlook (FY26 Q3 call) · p. 4 (OCR) ·
Azure growth guide
“Growth of approximately 45% in constant currency”
Deck First Quarter Fiscal Year 2027 Outlook (FY26 Q4 call) · p. 4 (OCR) ·
Microsoft Cloud gross margin stepping down
“Roughly 70%”
Deck Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2025 Outlook (FY25 Q1 call) · p. 4 (OCR) ·
Microsoft Cloud gross margin stepping down
“Roughly 69%”
Deck Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2025 Outlook (FY25 Q2 call) · p. 4 (OCR) ·
Microsoft Cloud gross margin stepping down
“Roughly 67%”
Deck Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2025 Outlook (FY25 Q3 call) · p. 4 (OCR) ·
Microsoft Cloud gross margin stepping down
“Roughly 67%”
Deck First Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Outlook (FY25 Q4 call) · p. 4 (OCR) ·
Microsoft Cloud gross margin stepping down
“Roughly 66%”
Deck Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Outlook (FY26 Q1 call) · p. 4 (OCR) ·
Microsoft Cloud gross margin stepping down
“Roughly 65%”
Deck Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Outlook (FY26 Q2 call) · p. 4 (OCR) ·
Microsoft Cloud gross margin stepping down
“Roughly 64%”
Deck Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Outlook (FY26 Q3 call) · p. 4 (OCR) ·
Microsoft Cloud gross margin stepping down
“Relatively stable quarter-over-quarter”
Deck First Quarter Fiscal Year 2027 Outlook (FY26 Q4 call) · p. 4 (OCR) ·
Capital expenditure on the outlook slide
“+ Expect FY26 capital expenditures growth to moderate compared to FY25 with a greater mix of short-lived”
Deck First Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Outlook (FY25 Q4 call) · p. 5 (OCR) ·
Capital expenditure on the outlook slide
“Capital expenditures expected to increase to over $40 billion”
Deck Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Outlook (FY26 Q3 call) · p. 3 (OCR) ·
Capital expenditure on the outlook slide
“Expected to be over $50 billion including the lease reclassification impact from the useful life update”
Deck First Quarter Fiscal Year 2027 Outlook (FY26 Q4 call) · p. 3 (OCR) ·
Operating margin statements
“Operating margins expected to be up slightly year-over-year”
Deck Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2025 Outlook (FY25 Q2 call) · p. 3 (OCR) ·
Operating margin statements
“Operating margins expected to be relatively unchanged year-over-year”
Deck First Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Outlook (FY25 Q4 call) · p. 5 (OCR) ·
Operating margin statements
“Operating margin Expected to remain relatively flat year-over-year”
Deck First Quarter Fiscal Year 2027 Outlook (FY26 Q4 call) · p. 3 (OCR) ·
OpenAI carve-outs
“Expected to be roughly $100 million excluding any impact from our investments in OpenAl”
Deck Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Outlook (FY26 Q1 call) · p. 3 (OCR) ·
OpenAI carve-outs
“Other income and expense + Expected to be roughly $700 million excluding any impact from our investments in OpenAl”
Deck Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Outlook (FY26 Q2 call) · p. 3 (OCR) ·
OpenAI carve-outs
“Expected to be roughly $(100) million excluding any impact from our investments in OpenAl”
Deck Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Outlook (FY26 Q3 call) · p. 3 (OCR) ·
OpenAI carve-outs
“Healthy growth on a growing expiry base when adjusted for OpenAl contracts in the prior year”
Deck First Quarter Fiscal Year 2027 Outlook (FY26 Q4 call) · p. 4 (OCR) ·
Foreign currency first
“Increase to revenue growth at the total company and all individual segment levels of less than 1 point”
Deck Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2025 Outlook (FY25 Q1 call) · p. 3 (OCR) ·
Foreign currency first
“Decrease to total revenue growth of 2 points, with 2 points in Productivity and Business Processes, 2 points in Intelligent Cloud, and roughly 1 point in More Personal Computing”
Deck Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2025 Outlook (FY25 Q2 call) · p. 3 (OCR) ·
Foreign currency first
“Increase to total revenue growth of less than 1 point, with roughly 1 point in Productivity and Business Processes and More Personal Computing, with no meaningful impact to Intelligent Cloud”
Deck Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Outlook (FY26 Q3 call) · p. 3 (OCR) ·
Foreign currency first
“Decrease to total revenue growth by less than 1 point, with roughly 1 point in Productivity and Business Processes, less than 1 point in Intelligent Cloud, and no meaningful impact in More Personal Computing”
Deck First Quarter Fiscal Year 2027 Outlook (FY26 Q4 call) · p. 3 (OCR) ·
Total company revenue range
“Revenue of $79.5 to $80.6 billion”
Deck Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Outlook (FY26 Q1 call) · p. 3 (OCR) ·
Total company revenue range
“Total Company + Revenue of $80.65 to $81.75 billion”
Deck Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Outlook (FY26 Q2 call) · p. 3 (OCR) ·
Total company revenue range
“Revenue of $86.7 to $87.8 billion”
Deck Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Outlook (FY26 Q3 call) · p. 3 (OCR) ·
Total company revenue range
“Revenue of $89.85 to $90.95 billion”
Deck First Quarter Fiscal Year 2027 Outlook (FY26 Q4 call) · p. 3 (OCR) ·
What they keep talking about · 9
The themes that show up deck after deck, and the ones that disappear.
- Azure
- On the outlook-detail slide in all eight and never on the headline page. The guide went 31-32% to about 45%, and every one of the seven checked was met or beaten.
- Cloud margin
- A number every quarter, falling almost every time: 70, 69, 67, 67, 66, 65, 64%. In July 2026 the number was replaced by "relatively stable quarter-over-quarter".
- Capex
- Absent from the outlook decks until July 2025, and then only in words. A dollar figure reached the headline page in April 2026 — the quarter the guide also went up.
- Margin
- Up slightly in FY25, unchanged in FY26, down less than a point in FY27. The first guided decline in the set.
- OpenAI
- From October 2025 the other-income, tax and bookings guides are all given "excluding any impact from our investments in OpenAI".
- Currency
- The first line of every headline outlook slide for two years, ahead of revenue and ahead of margin.
- Revenue range
- A total-company revenue range only from October 2025; before that only the three segments were given.
- New
- July 2026: an FY27 full-year page — revenue and operating income to "grow double-digits", margin down less than a point, capex to grow, free cash flow only to "remain positive".
- Quiet
- Gone from the outlook: the Enterprise and partner services guide (July 2025) and the Gaming revenue guide (October 2025). Gone from the results slides: Azure's AI-services points, M365 consumer subscribers and the annuity mix.
Every quarterly report we’ve saved · 8
The press releases and shareholder letters behind this page.
- Q2 2026 release · 8-K 29 Jul 2026
- Q1 2026 release · 8-K 29 Apr 2026
- Q4 2025 release · 8-K 28 Jan 2026
- Q3 2025 release · 8-K 29 Oct 2025
- Q2 2025 release · 8-K 30 Jul 2025
- Q1 2025 release · 8-K 30 Apr 2025
- Q2 FY2025 release · 8-K 29 Jan 2025
- Q3 2024 release · 8-K 30 Oct 2024
Archived as text; the links open the copies filed on EDGAR or the investor-relations site.
What analysts asked them
8 calls · Q1 25 – Q4 26The last eight earnings calls: what analysts kept asking about, which questions got dodged, and how much the CEO did the talking.
Share of questions by topic, call by call. A topic that suddenly dominates is usually the problem. The last row is how much of the answering the CEO did, rather than the CFO or others.
| Share of questions about… | Q1 25 | Q2 25 | Q3 25 | Q4 25 | Q1 26 | Q2 26 | Q3 26 | Q4 26 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Demand & customers | 22% | 25% | · | 50% | 71% | 17% | 50% | 17% |
| Growth & sales | 56% | 19% | · | 25% | 71% | 17% | 25% | 17% |
| Pricing & margins | 11% | 12% | · | 38% | 14% | 25% | 25% | 17% |
| Guidance & outlook | 22% | 6% | · | 38% | · | · | 25% | 17% |
| Capacity & supply | 33% | · | · | · | 14% | 17% | 12% | 33% |
| Capital & financing | 33% | 6% | · | 25% | 14% | 17% | 38% | 17% |
| Competition | · | · | · | 12% | · | 8% | · | · |
| Products & technology | 56% | 12% | · | 50% | 43% | 25% | 25% | 67% |
| Macro & regulation | · | 6% | · | · | · | · | · | · |
| Other | 11% | 50% | 100% | 25% | 14% | 33% | 12% | · |
| Questions | 9 | 16 | 1 | 8 | 7 | 12 | 8 | 6 |
| How much the CEO talked | 33% | 30% | 22% | 36% | 32% | 50% | 26% | 30% |
How these calls run. On the Q3 25 call, investors send questions in advance and investor relations reads them out, sometimes rephrased, and picks who answers. No analyst is heard live and nobody gets a follow-up, so this table shows the questions the company chose to read.
Who’s in charge, who’s selling
read from the filings · 1 Oct 2026Shareholder votes against the board and pay, plus which executives have been selling their own shares.
Tier 1 · live
The biggest customer is a company Microsoft owns about a quarter of
The FY2026 10-K puts revenue from OpenAI, including revenue-sharing payments, at $24.1bn — 7.3% of the total — with $6.0bn of the receivable owed by it, and describes "an approximate 25% interest on an as-converted basis" accounted for by the equity method, with $13.0bn committed and $11.9bn funded. The CFO put about 45% of the $678bn commercial backlog with OpenAI. FY26 other income also carried $6.5bn of gains on the stake, excluded from adjusted earnings.
Tier 2 · worsening
Asset lives lengthened and the capex headline cut by $15bn, both called no change
Datacenter useful lives go from 15 years to 25 from FY27, against a $313bn fleet and capex at 3.4 times depreciation. The same change reclassifies leases, and the calendar-2026 capex headline moved from about $190bn to about $175bn under the words "Investment expectations remain unchanged". Outside both numbers: $66.6bn of finance leases, $329bn of leases not yet commenced, and a supplier-financing receivable that went $8.2bn to $27.8bn in a year.
Tier 2 · stable
The chief executive chairs the board, and the board owns 0.03%
Nadella has been chief executive since 2014 and chairman since 2021. All thirteen directors and six officers together hold 2,279,620 shares of 7.43bn; his own holding is 900,572. The largest holders are Vanguard at 8.95% and BlackRock at 7.30%. Against the combined role sits a lead independent director, Sandra Peterson, who also chairs Governance and Nominating.
Tier 2 · worsening
Pay doubled in two years to $96.5m while free cash flow fell
Nadella's reported pay went $48.5m, $79.1m, $96.5m across fiscal 2023-25 — 480 times the median employee's $200,972 — while operating cash flow less capex fell from $74.1bn to $67.0bn. The cash bonus runs 70% on non-GAAP revenue and operating income and the equity is all performance stock; no metric in the plan is free cash flow or the return on the $116bn a year being spent. Say on pay drew about 8% against in both 2024 and 2025.
Tier 3 · worsening
Four board and officer changes in a year, and no filing names the new Compensation chair
Carlos Rodriguez, who chaired Compensation and sat on Audit, did not stand in December 2025 for personal reasons; Carmine Di Sibio joined in May 2026 onto both those committees but not as chair; Reid Hoffman will not stand in 2026; and Kathleen Hogan is in the FY2025 officer table and not the FY2026 one, with no Item 5.02 filed. Separately, the audit chair has drawn the lowest support of any director two years running, about 8% against, and nothing read says why.
Where shareholders voted no
At each annual meeting shareholders vote on who sits on the board, what the executives are paid and whether the company may create more shares. These are the votes that drew the most "no"s at the last two meetings: the shares voted against (or withheld) each year, then what share of all votes cast that was. Under each one, what the vote was about and what a no means.
| 2024 | 2025 | Share 2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Johnston (Audit chair)A board seat. Shareholders vote to keep this person on the board, the group that hires, pays and can fire the CEO. A no, or a withheld vote, says they want this director out, often because of the committee they sit on or a decision they signed off. | 420.6M | 437.8M | 8.5% |
| Nadella (chairman and CEO)A board seat. | 291.9M | 337.0M | 6.5% |
| Say on payExecutive pay. Shareholders say whether they accept what the top executives were paid. The vote is advisory: the board can ignore it, but a large no is a public rebuke and boards usually change the pay plan after one. | 448.3M | 415.8M | 8.1% |
| Ratify Deloitte & ToucheThe auditor. Keeping the outside accounting firm that checks the company's books. This almost always passes; a sizeable no means shareholders doubt the audit or think the firm has been in place too long. | 364.0M | 408.3M | 6.5% |
| ScharfA board seat. | 90.4M | 227.0M | 4.4% |
| Rainey (new in 2025)A board seat. | — | 14.7M | 0.3% |
Insiders who sold the most stock
Reported sales by executives and directors, biggest first.
| SEC insider data sets, Jul '25-Jun '26 | Sold | Note |
|---|---|---|
| All insiders | $122.7M | 19 sales by 6 people; about 61% under pre-set 10b5-1 plans |
| Against that | $3.4M bought | 2 open-market purchases — the research record said there were none, the data sets say otherwise |
| Net | -0.003% of market value | $119.3M net selling against a roughly $3.8tn company |