{"id":23413,"date":"2026-04-30T18:34:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T18:34:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/23413\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T18:34:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T18:34:24","slug":"microsoft-beats-but-ai-stock-laggard-still-has-much-to-prove-microsoft-nasdaqmsft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/23413\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Beats, But AI Stock Laggard Still Has Much To Prove &#8211; Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"block core-block\">Azure revenue grew 40%, topping consensus estimates of 39.3%, while Microsoft continued to show an improvement in operating margin.<\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">The cloud print was the key line item for investors looking for evidence that demand for AI infrastructure and enterprise cloud services remains durable.<\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">The quarter also showed some moderation <a href=\"https:\/\/www.benzinga.com\/markets\/tech\/26\/04\/52183870\/ai-memory-crunch-stocks-higher-but-big-tech-must-pay-up\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">in capital spending.<\/a> Microsoft&#8217;s capex slowed to $31.9 billion in the third quarter from $37.5 billion in the second quarter, coming in below the Street&#8217;s expectation of $35 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">Copilot, Microsoft&#8217;s AI assistant, also appears to be trending in the right direction.<\/p>\n<p>Expert Ideas<\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">Stephen Callahan, trading behavior specialist at Firstrade, said Microsoft&#8217;s results lacked the kind of surprise that could materially change sentiment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">&#8220;The read is that the earnings are absent any surprises,&#8221; Callahan told Benzinga.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">&#8220;So, given how weak the stock has been it&#8217;s not too bad. The numbers are consistent and stable, but there&#8217;s no breakout play, so that&#8217;s not going to get a positive reaction in the stock price.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">Callahan said AI demand remains strong, particularly from companies building on top of cloud infrastructure, but the broader supply chain continues to face capacity constraints.<\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">&#8220;There&#8217;s a lot of demand from other companies building AI, but this food chain&#8217;s capacity is constrained right now,&#8221; he said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">&#8220;They can say whatever capex number they want, but what are you getting for it when\u00a0there is scarcity in the hardware and pricing going up along that line?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>MSFT Stock Performance<\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">The bigger issue, Callahan said, is that Microsoft entered the AI cycle with extremely high expectations but has not delivered the kind of stock performance investors anticipated.<\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">&#8220;The bar for Microsoft&#8217;s shares is so low,&#8221; he said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">&#8220;Considering Microsoft was supposed to be the winner of AI, it&#8217;s been a terrible laggard, underperforming the next closest of these hyperscalers by many percentage points.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">Callahan warned that Microsoft may face pressure if the stock fails to rally despite lowered expectations.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">&#8220;There&#8217;s a lot of room for improvement,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">MSFT Price Action: Microsoft stock was down 5.95% at $399.21 at the time of publication on Thursday, according to<a href=\"https:\/\/www.benzinga.com\/pro\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"> Benzinga Pro data<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">Photo: Shutterstock<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Azure revenue grew 40%, topping consensus estimates of 39.3%, while Microsoft continued to show an improvement in operating&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23414,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[420,7829,15008,8657,8789,5895,5893,5896,7911,5892,320,7828,5891,7777,7778,5899,16113,7914],"class_list":{"0":"post-23413","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-microsoft","8":"tag-azure","9":"tag-azure-ai","10":"tag-category-earnings","11":"tag-category-exclusives","12":"tag-category-large-cap","13":"tag-category-movers","14":"tag-category-news","15":"tag-category-tech","16":"tag-category-trading-ideas","17":"tag-cms-wordpress","18":"tag-microsoft","19":"tag-microsoft-ai","20":"tag-pageisbzpro-bz","21":"tag-symbol-goog","22":"tag-symbol-googl","23":"tag-symbol-msft","24":"tag-tag-exclusive","25":"tag-tag-expert-ideas"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23413","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=23413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}