Microsoft  posted its fiscal third quarter earnings that surpassed analysts’ expectations – in the ninth consecutive quarter.

The software behemoth’s earnings for the quarter came in at $1.95 a share, compared to  $1.77 a share expected by analysts polled by FactSet.

Revenue of $41.7 billion also beat estimates of $40.83 billion. Revenue grew at +19% annualized rate – the biggest quarterly growth since 2018.PC sales was a major contributor to growth.

The company said its Azure public cloud grew +50%, faster than the +46% growth analysts had expected, according to a CNBC review of 14 equity research notes.

Citing sources familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal reported that the app may instead consider an initial public offering.

Earlier, the software behemoth was reportedly in talks to offer more than $10 billion for Discord .Other potential buyers included Epic Games and Amazon.com.

Last year, Microsoft sought to acquire social-media app TikTok.

Nashville Mayor John Cooper announced that Oracle would fund a $1.2 billion campus in his city.  According to the Mayor’s office, the campus will generate about $8.8 million annually in local sales and use taxes.

The computer technology company’s campus is expected to bring 2,500 jobs to the city by the end of 2027 and 8,500 by the end of 2031.The investment potentially includes $175 million in public infrastructure. 

The mayor revealed that Oracle will pay upfront all the infrastructure costs.

Oracle has requested a public hearing to seek approval of an economic impact plan with the Metro Industrial Development Board.

 

 

Microsoft has agreed to acquire computer technology firm Nuance Communications  in a $20 billion all-cash deal.

Microsoft will pay $56 a share for Nuance, a 23% premium to its Friday closing price.It would be Microsoft's second-largest deal on record, after its $26 billion deal for Linkedin in 2016. 

"Nuance provides the AI layer at the healthcare point of delivery and is a pioneer in the real-world application of enterprise AI," said CEO Satya Nadella.

Microsoft won a major Pentagon contract, potentially worth $22 billion for the next years, for augmented reality headsets. Per the contract, the technology giant will produce 120,000 of the headsets, which are based on its HoloLens technology, According to a statement from the Program Executive Office Soldier, the Pentagon awarded Microsoft a fixed price production agreement to manufacture...

BlackBerry Limited posted fourth quarter revenue that fell short of analysts’ expectations. This could in part be due to licensing revenue challenges amid negotiations to sell patents that bring in licensing revenue. The company’s adjusted earnings for the quarter came in at 3 cents a share, on non-GAAP revenue of $215 million. In the same period a year ago, the company reported earnings of 9...

Oracle posted fiscal third-quarter adjusted earnings that surpassed analysts’ expectations. The cloud technology behemoth’s adjusted earnings came in at $1.16, above the $1.11 per share expected by analysts (according to Refinitiv). Adjusted earnings surged +20% from the year-ago quarter. Revenue for the quarter rose +3% on an annualized basis to $10.09 billion, vs. $10.07 billion expected by...

Fund manager Cathie Wood said her exchange-traded funds bought a total 2.65 million shares of data-analytics company Palantir’s stock. Wood’s purchased about 2 million shares for her flagship ETF, ARK Innovation and about 650,000 in her ARK Next Generation Internet ETF. Wood’s purchases amount to around $62.5 million, based on Wednesday’s closing price of the stock. Last month, Wood revealed...

Twilio crushed analysts’ expectations by posting a profit for the fourth quarter. The cloud communication platform’s adjusted earnings for the quarter came in at 4 cents per share, compared to a loss of -8 cents per share expected by analysts polled by Refinitiv. Revenue of $548.1 million also topped analysts’ expectation sof $454.8 million. Contribution of political activity was $23 million...

Dropbox posted fourth quarter earnings that surpassed analysts’ expectations, on the back of increasing number of paying users. The file hosting service’s earnings for the quarter came in at 28 cents a share(up from the year-ago quarter’s 16 cents a share), compared to the 24 cents a share expected by analysts polled by Factset. Revenue of $504.1 billion (up from year-ago period’s $446...

Palantir Technologies reported a wider-than-expected fourth-quarter loss. However, the software company expects solid sales for the first quarter and full year. Palantir incurred a net loss of -$148.3 million, or -8 cents a share, vs. a loss of -$159.3 million, or -29 cents a share, in the year-ago quarter. Analysts polled by FactSet had been expecting a narrower loss, -3 cents a share...

Microsoft Corp.  posted earnings much stronger than expected by analysts. The performance was bolstered by the tech behemoth’s  cloud revenues and personal computer sales.

Microsoft’s earnings for the three months ending in December, (the company's fiscal second quarter) increased +34% year-over-year to $2.03 per share, well ahead of the Street consensus forecast of $1.64 per share.

 Revenues surged +17% year-over-year to $43.1 billion, again exceeding analysts' estimates of  $40.2 billion.

Intelligent Cloud revenues climbed +23% from the year-ago period to $14.6 billion, with server products and cloud services sales rising 26%, driven by a 50% jump in revenues for Azure, Microsoft's cloud offering.

Revenues in Personal computing segment rose +14% to $15.1 billion, apparently driven by the 'work-from-home' culture amid pandemic.

BlackBerry   announced an expanded partnership with Baidu,   on automated high-definition mapping software that is used  in Baidu's autonomous vehicle technology.

The deal broadens Baidu’s use of BlackBerry’s operating system in its "Apollo" autonomous driving open platform.The integrated system will be available on Guangzhou Automobile Group electric vehicle arm’s upcoming GAC New Energy Aion models.

On Friday, Oracle  got a sell rating from Goldman Sachs, as the bank initiated coverage of 12 software companies.

Goldman Sachs said, “when we asked CIOs which vendors will gain or lose share in DX [digital experience] budgets, amongst all vendors, ORCL did not perform well,”.

According to the Goldman Sachs analysts, Oracle had a “net strength of negative 39%, defined as the percentage gaining share less the percentage losing share.”

They also mentioned that for several years  Oracle has focused on organic development, and that it did not  make any major acquisitions.The net result of this strategy, according to Goldman Sachs analysts,  has been a “steady deceleration” in revenue growth from 4% in FY14-15 to 0.3% in FY20.

 

The analysts also mentioned that  it “stands out very uniquely” in technology, given its “strong presence across all layers of the cloud stack including applications platforms and infrastructure.” 

They think  that Microsoft is well positioned to double its $60 billion-plus commercial cloud business (Azure, Office 365, Dynamics, and LinkedIn Commercial) into a $120 billion to $140 billion business in the longer term.Microsoft’s installed base of on-premise Windows servers alone represents $80 billion to $90 billion in potential Azure business, according to the analysts’ thesis.

The rallies off the March lows and then after the little hiccups we saw in September and October have put the four main U.S. indices in overbought territory based on the weekly RSI and weekly stochastic indicators.Stocks that don’t have the best fundamentals, but have gone up with the overall market and have elevated overbought/oversold indicators.

Something that stood out in my search was a trio of software stocks with poor fundamental indicators and high readings on their weekly OB/OS indicators.

I ran a scan of S&P 500 stocks on January 6, and 320 members of the index have weekly stochastics readings above 70.The rally in the overall market over the last few months has created the current situation.

Each month I build a list of stocks that meet certain fundamental requirements and then I keep an eye on the weekly charts, trying to find a good entry point to buy the stocks that I am interested in.

Digital payments company Square Inc., has reportedly held talks to acquire the music-streaming platform Tidal, as it tries to diversify its business.

Citing an source familiar with the matter (and not willing to be named) , Bloomberg reported that Jack Dorsey, who runs Square, has discussed a potential deal with rapper Jay-Z who bought Tidal for $56 million in early 2015. Talks are still private and do not necessarily imply a deal, according to the report.

Tidal has had a challenge keeping up with peers  including Spotify Technology SA and Apple Music.

Morgan Stanley analyst Keith Weiss’ top pick for next year is  Microsoft .He also boosted his price target on the stock to $260 from $249.

“With tough near-term comparisons already in consensus estimates, and the multiple having pulled back to 26 times [estimated] 2022 calendar year EPS, we see potential for outperformance in fiscal year 2021 [ending June 30],” Weiss wrote in a commentary.  He thinks that the durability of growth and margin expansion are underappreciated.

According to Weiss, a combination of market factors like sector rotation out of software, as well as Microsoft-specific factors have been weighing on the stock.

In our opinion, technical factors tend to have a greater influence over the short term while fundamentals are more important over the long run. Sometimes we see stocks with good fundamentals that enter a downward trend and have a hard time breaking out of it.NetApp peaked up near $82 back in September ’18—the prices on the chart below are adjusted for dividend payments.