On November 15, Microsoft goes ex-dividend with a payout of $0.42, which is an increase of 7% compared to its previous payout of $0.39. Microsoft also announced stellar earnings of 84 cents a share for Q1 2018 compared to 72 cents per share reported a year ago. The stock is up 35% on a YTD basis so far. All these catalysts were sure to get the attention of Dividend.com Premium members, as they pushed the stock up two places from 18 to 16 on the list.
Some key talking points that are propelling Microsoft higher:
- Microsoft reached its 2018 target of $20 billion in annualized commercial cloud run rate.
- The company has beat analysts’ expectations in all three of its business segments.
- Revenue from Azure is up 90% on a YOY basis.
Microsoft was heading toward a downfall as the market had shifted away from desktop computers to smartphones. Microsoft’s share price has now gone convincingly beyond the highs it gave during the peak of the dotcom bubble.
Microsoft is poised to keep growing its cloud business, personal computing business, and its productivity and business process segment. These expectations are well priced in the stock as it currently trades at 28.5 times TTM earnings. This astronomical valuation has made the stock’s yield very unattractive at just 2% compared to the average dividend yield of the components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) Index, which currently stands at 2.6%.
Some other stocks that saw gains on the Most Watched Stocks List include UPS, Realty Income and Honeywell. UPS could be a seasonal uptrend because of the holiday season that’s fast approaching. Realty Income improved its rank further, from 29 to 27, after breaking into the top 30 last week, and aerospace & defense giant Honeywell gained three places.
Our Most Watched Stocks List is a user-generated, interest-based ranking of dividend-paying stocks, giving you a real-time snapshot of buying interest in the market. Generated by our Premium members’ watchlists, it’s aggregated and ranked by the most watched criteria.
The list has been designed to help income investors navigate the top dividend stocks being tracked by one of the world’s most advanced investing communities.
