Microsoft growth rate up; free cash flow machine remains in place

Posted Apr 27th 2007 10:37AM by Eric Buscemi
Filed under: Earnings Reports, Microsoft (MSFT)

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) is seeing the benefit of its new product launches, as one would expect. Its massive installed base and new product launches are allowing it to increase its contract prices to customers.

Revenue growth was up 17% for the March quarter, operating income beat estimates by 3 to 4 cents and free cash flow was $7 billion, a typically amazing number for the software giant. The company repurchased $6.7 billion in stock and continues to pay dividends.

Guidance is also solid for 2008, expecting 11% revenue growth or a $5.0 billion revenue increase, which exceeds the total annual revenue for most publicly traded companies, as management mentioned.

Microsoft's stock tends to do best when revenue growth is accelerating, which is currently the case. Also, Microsoft is really low-balling guidance so it should be able to easily beat analyst estimates.

The stock has had a big move, so it is hard to get overly excited about it, I'd wait for market pull-back before jumping in.

Tags: buyback, dividend, earnings, guidance, microsoft, msft, steve ballmer, SteveBallmer