Investing.com – Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) shares were inching towards a 1% gain Monday as Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) reiterated its bullish outlook on the stock with a $300 target.
The target is 18.5% higher than the stock’s current level of $253.
“Multiple years of solid top-line growth, expanding margins and an expanding multiple have investors concerned the best results are behind the company,” analyst Keith Weiss wrote.
Weiss discussed the software and cloud giant’s growth durability and further margin expansion in the note and pointed out that the company had delivered superior returns over a long period of time to deserve a bullish outlook.
“. . .Our primary research points to an attractive path going forward, as evidenced by CIOs' view that Microsoft should gain the most IT wallet share with the move to the cloud. More specifically, CIOs see Microsoft as the preferred vendor across hybrid cloud, IaaS, and PaaS workloads,” Weiss wrote.
The analyst said longer-term, the higher-margin, recurring gaming revenue should help offset margin pressures from hardware, particularly as the mix of gaming revenue continues to shift away from console sales.
Saturday, the Redmond, Washington-based giant secured the U.S. antitrust approval to buy artificial intelligence and speech technology company Nuance Communications (NASDAQ:NUAN) for $16 billion.