Microsoft's Stock Is Suffering Its Longest Losing Streak In Years. What Gives?

Dow Jones
Nov 07

Microsoft hasn't gotten much love for its latest earnings results. Case in point: Its shares have fallen every day since the company posted upbeat numbers last Wednesday.

And when you factor in the fractional decline seen in the session prior to that report, Microsoft's stock $(MSFT)$ is on track to log its seventh straight daily drop. That would be its longest losing streak since Sept. 6, 2022, when it also fell for seven trading days in a row, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

The stock has lost 8.3% over the current seven-session span.

Microsoft's stock drop is at odds with better-than-expected results from the technology giant, which posted 40% growth in its cloud-computing business during the latest quarter, above consensus expectations for 38% growth. But the high bar for Microsoft isn't exactly new, as the stock also struggled to find momentum after its previous strong report about three months back.

"Even good earnings get dismissed," Mizuho trading-desk analyst Jordan Klein wrote on Thursday. In general, he saw investors rotating out of "laggard megacaps" in pursuit of momentum-driven "AI winners that seem to want to outperform off either better fundamentals or hype around expected capex boosts." Microsoft and other large technology companies have lifted their capital-expenditure expectations, and investors are looking for opportunities downstream of those dollars.

He wrote earlier this week that it was "sad" that Microsoft's stock "still goes down every day even though they are quickly expanding [data-center] capacity to boost AI [revenues] and manage a mountain of AI bookings."

But that higher spending could be an issue for Wall Street and "seems to be acting as a headwind" for Microsoft shares, Evercore ISI analyst Kirk Materne said in a weekend note.

Read: Worried about a drop in tech stocks? How to play defense with your portfolio.

Investors may be taking a more discerning look at capital spending generally as Big Tech companies ramp their expenditures while the returns of AI investment remain unclear. Microsoft, though, maintained that it wasn't overbuilding and that its AI capacity could serve many players beyond just high-profile names, especially as more enterprise customers begin to adopt AI.

Materne is optimistic about the spending, saying that the company "continues to invest in line with the demand it is seeing, and these capex investments will result in continued, strong revenue growth."

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