Microsoft on Thursday reported first quarter earnings just ahead of Wall Street estimates, though the company's sales and current quarter forecast fell short of expectations.
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Member since:2005-07-09
> If Microsoft's sliding into the gutter, it's going to
> take them a long time to get there at this rate.
Yes and no. The thing is, Microsoft's current profit depends on it's monopoly. While Microsoft has a monopoly, you'd dead on, but things look very different when they are no longer a monopoly. Suppose ODF removes the need for MS Office and Linux or MacOSX or WINE runs all apps that Windows runs, so Windows becomes irrelevant. If this happens, Microsoft would lose it's monopoly status and it's cash cow. That would put a significant dent in their profit. And if can't rely on milking their cash cow, they'll have to compete like every other company and significantly increase their expenses. These two fact would have a dramatic effect on their capitalization.
Member since:2005-07-06
There other product lines are either just starting to make some money or working there way to proffitability. So, I think by the time any of that would happen, it will be offset by their other divisions actually pulling their own weight.
Also, Microsoft has enough cash to last an entire year with absolutely no revenue (something BG has had in place for a couple of years).
Member since:2005-07-06
There other product lines are either just starting to make some money or working there way to proffitability. So, I think by the time any of that would happen, it will be offset by their other divisions actually pulling their own weight.
Also, Microsoft has enough cash to last an entire year with absolutely no revenue (something BG has had in place for a couple of years).
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Repost because, apparently, this was something that should be modded down to someone? Grow up.
Member since:
The OP was right. MSFT reported about 10.7 billion shares outstanding as of 9/9/2005.
A "share outstanding" is one that is owned by an individual, including restricted stock grants that are not yet vested. This differs from "allocated shares" which are the total number of shares the company is divided up into, some of which may actually be held by the company itself.
When people mention "market capitilization", they are talking the stock price multiplied but the outstanding shares. In this case, about 267 billion US dollars for MSFT as of this morning.
When you figure in inflation, that represents about an average 9% drop in value each year over the past 4 years or so.
I think what the OP was pointing out is that even at that steady rate of decline, it would take 16 years for them to get down to Apple Computer's current market cap, 22 years to reach Gate's personal net-worth, about 50 years to get to RedHat's market cap and about 54 years to reach Novell's.
If Microsoft's sliding into the gutter, it's going to take them a long time to get there at this rate.