{"id":125849,"date":"2026-07-31T14:54:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T14:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/125849\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T14:54:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T14:54:11","slug":"microsoft-just-did-the-unexpected-so-im-loading-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/125849\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Just Did the Unexpected So I\u2019m 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;\">Microsoft beat Q4 EPS estimates by 12% and grew net income 31% while holding a 46% operating margin, a level of leverage that is rare at trillion-dollar scale.  <\/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&#8217;s $678 billion commercial backlog, up 84%, and 30 million Copilot paid seats offer revenue visibility AMZN and GOOGL simply cannot match.  <\/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=c50d84ff-fbeb-4258-8186-b1a8e89fe8da&amp;p=aded526a-f78d-426a-9c96-82c54af7e0ab&amp;pos=keypoints&amp;tpid=1633723&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||1633723\" 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 hit 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>) again this week, and I have no intention of stopping.  <\/p>\n<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/s.yimg.com\/lo\/mysterio\/api\/A72BA20D4374E9A18CE357AA25F24C66FA1FC2DD44FCBA20305CC0B71FB3924E\/subgraphmysterio\/resizefit_w960;quality_80;format_webp\/https:%2F%2Fmedia.zenfs.com%2Fen%2F24_7_wall_st__718%2F9a3ebdc60b2f041577bbcf78e79d00f7\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP\/\/\/ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==\" height=\"540\" width=\"960\" class=\"yf-j98iil loader\"\/><\/a> Chris Hondros \/ Getty Images           <\/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;\">What keeps pulling me back is simple. This is a company charging customers for AI at scale while expanding margins, and the market keeps handing me chances to buy it cheaper. Microsoft closed at $390.54 on July 29, down 23.2% over the last year and 18.89% year to date. That is the setup I keep getting rewarded for accumulating into.  <\/p>\n<p>            The Quarter That Convinced Me to Add Again          <\/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;\">Microsoft reported Q4 FY26 non-GAAP EPS of $4.74 against a $4.2397 estimate, an 11.81% beat and the fifth straight quarter of beating consensus. Revenue landed at $90.007 billion, up 17.75% year over year. What made me add was the shape of the beat.  <\/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;\">Net income grew 31.33% on revenue growth of 17.75%. That is operating leverage most cloud businesses cannot show while spending $115.95 billion in annual capex on AI infrastructure. Operating margin came in at 45.62%, ROE at 33.28%, and interest coverage sits at 53.89x. Those are the fingerprints of a business monetizing AI at the same time it funds it.  <\/p>\n<p>        Three Reasons the Thesis Holds          <\/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, Azure. Azure grew 43% year over year and crossed $100 billion in full-year revenue for the first time. A scale milestone I did not expect this fiscal 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;\">Second, the backlog. Commercial remaining performance obligations reached $678 billion, up 84% year over year. That is contracted future revenue and visibility I get from almost no other mega-cap I own.  <\/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=c50d84ff-fbeb-4258-8186-b1a8e89fe8da&amp;p=92103f51-044f-4669-8ba5-a79fcf7642bd&amp;pos=mid_content&amp;tpid=1633723&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||1633723\" 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;\">Third, adoption. Microsoft 365 Copilot passed 30 million paid seats. CEO Satya Nadella framed it on the release: &#8220;This year, Azure revenue surpassed $100 billion for the first time, and Microsoft 365 Copilot reached over 30 million paid seats, reflecting the confidence customers are placing in us to power their AI transformation.&#8221;  <\/p>\n<p>        Why Not Amazon or Alphabet?           <\/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 two 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>) 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>). I own some of both. I keep adding to Microsoft because of what its filings actually show: a 45.62% operating margin, a 68.82% gross margin, and net debt to EBITDA of 0.187. Microsoft is running one of the highest-margin, lowest-leverage AI franchises at trillion-dollar scale, and the $678 billion RPO gives me a revenue runway I have yet to see quantified this cleanly elsewhere.  <\/p>\n<p>            The Risk I Am Not Ignoring         <\/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;\">Free cash flow is the concern. Q4 free cash flow was $19.639 billion, down 23.19% year over year, and full-year capex jumped to $115.95 billion, up 79.62%. If AI demand softens, that spending stops looking like investment. What keeps me buying is the RPO figure and the Copilot seat count. Contracted demand is showing up first, and the capex is chasing paid customers.  <\/p>\n<p>       Why the Buy Button Stays Active         <\/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 stock closed flat at $390.54 on the day of an 11.81% earnings beat. Ten-year total return sits at 679.33%. When a business compounding like this hands me weakness after a report like this one, my job as a long-term holder is to keep showing up.  <\/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=c50d84ff-fbeb-4258-8186-b1a8e89fe8da&amp;p=ea93966a-680e-4e83-abfa-2ea9e7c81711&amp;pos=end_of_article&amp;tpid=1633723&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||1633723\" 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\/markets\/stocks\/articles\/mailto:editorial@247wallst.com?subject=Feedback%3A%20Microsoft%20Just%20Did%20the%20Unexpected%20So%20I%E2%80%99m%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%2F31%2Fmicrosoft-just-did-the-unexpected-so-im-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 Microsoft beat Q4 EPS estimates by 12% and grew net income 31% while holding a 46%&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[420,7853,416,320,419,7852,8336,3303,2791],"class_list":["post-125849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-microsoft","tag-azure","tag-azure-copilot","tag-copilot","tag-microsoft","tag-microsoft-365","tag-microsoft-copilot","tag-operating-margin","tag-revenue-growth","tag-top-10-ai-stocks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125849","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=125849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}