{"id":115324,"date":"2026-07-22T19:08:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T19:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/115324\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T19:08:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T19:08:11","slug":"relationships-matter-microsoft-has-3-that-keep-me-loading-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/115324\/","title":{"rendered":"Relationships Matter: Microsoft Has 3 That Keep Me Loading Up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>        Quick Read            <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">MSFT trades at a forward P\/E of 20 while its AI business runs at a $37B annualized rate, up 123% year over year.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">Unlike AMZN or GOOGL, MSFT holds a royalty-free frontier AI model license through 2032 and co-develops rack-scale AI hardware with AMD.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">Q3 CapEx hit $31B, up 84%, but operating cash flow surged 26% to $47B that same quarter, cushioning the spend.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks \u2014 and Microsoft didn&#8217;t make the cut. <a href=\"https:\/\/247wallst.com\/lp\/top-10-ai-stocks\/MSFT\/?i=820dc813-1f60-4550-a916-fed21ab64ba9&amp;p=aded526a-f78d-426a-9c96-82c54af7e0ab&amp;pos=keypoints&amp;tpid=1628185&amp;l=b17ce983-5361-4dba-a2fd-2469b8705237&amp;c=3af9b05b-bac6-4a46-815a-254223a80206&amp;utm_source=yahoo&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=feed&amp;utm_content=feed||1628185\" data-ylk=\"slk:Grab%20the%20names%20FREE%20today;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;source:content-canvas%20default\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Grab the names FREE today&quot;,&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yTrafficOrigin&quot;:&quot;content-canvas default&quot;}\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Grab the names FREE today<\/a>.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">I keep hitting the buy button on Microsoft (<a href=\"https:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/quote\/MSFT\/\" data-ylk=\"slk:NASDAQ%3AMSFT;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;source:content-canvas%20default\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;NASDAQ:MSFT&quot;,&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yTrafficOrigin&quot;:&quot;content-canvas default&quot;}\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">NASDAQ:MSFT<\/a>) because I am buying three relationships that no other Mag 7 name can replicate, and the market just handed me a chance to load up while the stock sits down 16.45% year to date and down 20.49% over the past year.  <\/p>\n<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/s.yimg.com\/lo\/mysterio\/api\/3107F7EF7121D4E1A2A56B29A2DEF0ABE4A2E5D6CFE479693F70C23A963EE16F\/subgraphmysterio\/resizefit_w960;quality_80;format_webp\/https:%2F%2Fmedia.zenfs.com%2Fen%2F24_7_wall_st__718%2Fa52cff4f8cf1a45e28402574e33b6a95\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP\/\/\/ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==\" alt=\"Two business professionals shake hands in a modern office environment, surrounded by digital interface overlays representing collaboration, technology, and innovation in a professional setting. Ledger\" height=\"554\" width=\"960\" class=\"yf-lf2kr7 loader\"\/><\/a> Summit Art Creations \/ Shutterstock.com           The Three Relationships That Keep Pulling Me Back          <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">First, the OpenAI model and API relationship. Satya Nadella spelled it out plainly on the last call: &#8220;We have a frontier model royalty-free with all the IP rights that we will have access to all the way to &#8217;32, and we fully plan to exploit it.&#8221; Microsoft owns roughly 27% of OpenAI valued near $135B, and OpenAI has contracted an incremental $250B in Azure services. That is a customer, a supplier, and a partner in one seat.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">Second, the AMD Helios rack-scale co-development. On July 20, 2026, Microsoft confirmed it will integrate AMD&#8217;s Helios AI platform and next-generation EPYC processors into Azure across new HDv2, HXv2, and ND MI455X v7 virtual machines. Microsoft is designing the rack alongside Advanced Micro Devices (<a href=\"https:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/quote\/AMD\/\" data-ylk=\"slk:NASDAQ%3AAMD;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;source:content-canvas%20default\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;NASDAQ:AMD&quot;,&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yTrafficOrigin&quot;:&quot;content-canvas default&quot;}\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">NASDAQ:AMD<\/a>), not renting one.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">Third, the Copilot+ PC silicon standard and the enterprise seat base behind it. Microsoft now has over 20 million Microsoft 365 Copilot paid seats, seat adds up 250% year over year, and Accenture alone at 740,000 seats. That is the client-edge lock.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks \u2014 and Microsoft didn&#8217;t make the cut. <a href=\"https:\/\/247wallst.com\/lp\/top-10-ai-stocks\/MSFT\/?i=820dc813-1f60-4550-a916-fed21ab64ba9&amp;p=92103f51-044f-4669-8ba5-a79fcf7642bd&amp;pos=mid_content&amp;tpid=1628185&amp;l=b17ce983-5361-4dba-a2fd-2469b8705237&amp;c=3af9b05b-bac6-4a46-815a-254223a80206&amp;utm_source=yahoo&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=feed&amp;utm_content=feed||1628185\" data-ylk=\"slk:Grab%20the%20names%20FREE%20today;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;source:content-canvas%20default\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Grab the names FREE today&quot;,&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yTrafficOrigin&quot;:&quot;content-canvas default&quot;}\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Grab the names FREE today<\/a>.  <\/p>\n<p>        The Data That Makes It Cheap           <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">The AI business now runs at a $37B annualized rate, up 123% year over year. Commercial remaining performance obligations sit at $627B, up 99%. Q3 FY26 delivered EPS of $4.27 against $4.09 estimated, the fourth consecutive beat, on revenue of $82.89B, up 18.3%. Operating margin holds at 45.62%, ROE at 33.28%, and debt to equity at 0.176 with interest coverage of 53.89x. At a trailing P\/E of 23 and a forward P\/E of 20, I am paying a market multiple for one of the highest-quality balance sheets in the market.  <\/p>\n<p>            Why Not the Obvious Alternatives         <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">The names a reader reaches for first are Amazon (<a href=\"https:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/quote\/AMZN\/\" data-ylk=\"slk:NASDAQ%3AAMZN;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;source:content-canvas%20default\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;NASDAQ:AMZN&quot;,&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yTrafficOrigin&quot;:&quot;content-canvas default&quot;}\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">NASDAQ:AMZN<\/a>) for AWS and Alphabet (<a href=\"https:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/quote\/GOOGL\/\" data-ylk=\"slk:NASDAQ%3AGOOGL;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;source:content-canvas%20default\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;NASDAQ:GOOGL&quot;,&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yTrafficOrigin&quot;:&quot;content-canvas default&quot;}\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">NASDAQ:GOOGL<\/a>) for Google Cloud. Neither one owns a royalty-free IP license to a frontier model through 2032. Neither one shows me a $627B RPO backlog that grew 99%. Neither one is running 17 exabytes of enterprise context in a WorkIQ layer that gets stickier every day. Azure grew 40% off a base that crossed $75B in annual revenue in FY25. My money keeps going here because the moat is specific and measurable.  <\/p>\n<p>       The Real Risk         <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">CapEx. Q3 alone hit $30.88B, up 84.39%, and management guided calendar 2026 CapEx near $190B. Free cash flow fell 3.32% in FY25. If AI returns do not materialize, payback stretches. What keeps me steady: roughly two-thirds is short-lived GPU and CPU capacity, with the rest supporting 15-plus year monetization, and operating cash flow climbed 26.01% to $46.68B in a single quarter.  <\/p>\n<p>       Forward Conviction         <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">Analysts carry a $558.21 target with 54 buys and zero sells. I need the three relationships to keep compounding, the dividend of $3.56 per share to keep growing, and management to keep returning capital like the $12.7B they sent shareholders in Q2 alone. As long as OpenAI, AMD, and 20 million Copilot seats pull in the same direction, my buy button stays warm.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">Act now: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 AI stocks \u2014 and Microsoft didn&#8217;t make the cut. <a href=\"https:\/\/247wallst.com\/lp\/top-10-ai-stocks\/MSFT\/?i=820dc813-1f60-4550-a916-fed21ab64ba9&amp;p=ea93966a-680e-4e83-abfa-2ea9e7c81711&amp;pos=end_of_article&amp;tpid=1628185&amp;c=3af9b05b-bac6-4a46-815a-254223a80206&amp;l=b17ce983-5361-4dba-a2fd-2469b8705237&amp;utm_source=yahoo&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=feed&amp;utm_content=feed||1628185\" data-ylk=\"slk:Grab%20the%20names%20FREE%20today;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;source:content-canvas%20default\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Grab the names FREE today&quot;,&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yTrafficOrigin&quot;:&quot;content-canvas default&quot;}\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Grab the names FREE today<\/a>.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"text text-block paragraph text-left neo-font-paragraph-xl-reg  yf-18d6y07\" style=\"text-decoration: none; font-style: normal; text-transform: none; text-align: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal;\">Contact <a href=\"https:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/technology\/ai\/articles\/mailto:editorial@247wallst.com?subject=Feedback%3A%20Relationships%20Matter%3A%20Microsoft%20Has%203%20That%20Keep%20Me%20Loading%20Up&amp;body=Please%20share%20your%20feedback%20here%3A%0D%0A%0D%0A---%0D%0A%0D%0ARegarding%20this%20article%3A%20https%3A%2F%2F247wallst.com%2Finvesting%2F2026%2F07%2F22%2Frelationships-matter-microsoft-has-3-that-keep-me-loading-up%2F\" data-ylk=\"slk:editorial%40247wallst.com;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;source:content-canvas%20default\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;editorial@247wallst.com&quot;,&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yTrafficOrigin&quot;:&quot;content-canvas default&quot;}\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">editorial@247wallst.com<\/a> for any questions or corrections.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Quick Read MSFT trades at a forward P\/E of 20 while its AI business runs at a $37B&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[420,7829,320,419,7828,12151],"class_list":["post-115324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-microsoft","tag-azure","tag-azure-ai","tag-microsoft","tag-microsoft-365","tag-microsoft-ai","tag-operating-cash-flow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}