{"id":17819,"date":"2026-05-21T16:22:02","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T16:22:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/17819\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T16:22:02","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T16:22:02","slug":"bnp-paribas-delivers-blunt-message-on-microsoft-stock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/17819\/","title":{"rendered":"BNP Paribas delivers blunt message on Microsoft stock"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Microsoft (MSFT<\/a>) has found itself in unfamiliar territory.<\/p>\n

For a stock that spent much of the past decade as Wall Street<\/a>\u2019s darling, 2026 has been anything but.<\/p>\n

According to Seeking Alpha<\/a>, the stock has tanked roughly 17% year-to-date, its worst quarterly showing since the 2008 financial crisis.<\/p>\n

However, top bank BNP Paribas<\/a> just cut through the noise with one of the sharpest calls on Wall Street.<\/p>\n

The bank said that the ingredients for a rebound are simmering, but that the near-term pain isn’t going away quietly.<\/p>\n

BNP analyst Stefan Slowinski didn’t mince words about the frustration, saying that,<\/p>\n

“The ‘SaaS Smash’ has not spared Microsoft, which is the largest SaaS vendor, mainly through its 365 Commercial Cloud products.”<\/p>\n

However, Slowinski believes there isn\u2019t a broken core business here.<\/p>\n

Azure continues to generate a ton of cash, and the enterprise moat is massive to say the least. The conundrum is whether the tech giant can convert its massive AI<\/a> investments into real top-line growth in a relatively short period.<\/p>\n

This, in turn, is a twofold problem: Copilot traction and Azure capacity allocation.<\/p>\n

Slowinski argues that investors have grown too impatient with Copilot’s lack of clear momentum, potentially overlooking future growth from Anthropic\u2019s Cowork product.<\/p>\n

In fact, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella<\/a> is reportedly working<\/a> to fix Copilot, with a clear focus on improving user experience and performance.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the company is tackling another issue in Azure capacity.<\/p>\n

BNP Paribas estimates that nearly one-third of Microsoft\u2019s new AI capacity last quarter was used internally, supporting its internal apps and training AI models, rather than being sold to customers.<\/p>\n

According to Microsoft\u2019s latest earnings transcript<\/a> (Q2 2025), if the capacity had been directed to external clients, growth might have topped 40%, rather than the 38% reported.<\/p>\n

The fear here is that Microsoft is being drawn into a relentless and incredibly expensive superintelligence race with its own partner OpenAI, which happens to be Azure\u2019s share of the collateral damage.<\/p>\n

\"Strong Strong fundamentals remain intact, though Copilot traction and capex concerns weigh on sentimentGetty Images &Tab;picture alliance &sol; Contributor Microsoft stock returns compared to the S&P 500 <\/p>\n

Over the past week, Microsoft returned 15.23%, compared with the S&P 500<\/a>\u2019s 4.46%.<\/p>\n

Over the past month, Microsoft returned 7.49%, compared with the S&P 500\u2019s 6.41%.<\/p>\n

Over the past six months, Microsoft returned -15.97%, compared with the S&P 500\u2019s 7.54%.<\/p>\n

Year to date, Microsoft returned -11.11%, compared with the S&P 500\u2019s 4.14%.<\/p>\n

Over the past year, Microsoft returned 15.69%, compared with the S&P 500\u2019s 35.13%.<\/p>\n

Over the past three years, Microsoft returned 50.24%, compared with the S&P 500\u2019s 72.30%.
Source: Seeking Alpha.<\/p>\n

Microsoft’s fiscal Q2 2026 Highlights <\/p>\n

Microsoft\u2019s most recent earnings report suggests the company is far from broken. Revenue is growing at a double-digit clip, while margins remain the envy of the software world.<\/p>\n

Revenue: $81.3 billion, up 17% year-over-year. Comfortably ahead of consensus.<\/p>\n

Azure Growth: 38% in constant currency. Solid, but below the “over 40%” whisper number.<\/p>\n

Productivity and Business Processes: $31.2 billion, up 14%.<\/p>\n

Intelligent Cloud: $29.1 billion, up 19%.<\/p>\n

Commercial Remaining Performance Obligation: $625 billion. A backlog roughly the size of Switzerland’s GDP<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Copilot Seats: 15 million paid seats. Impressive, but still just 3.3% of Microsoft’s 450 million commercial M365 base.
Source: Investor Relations Microsoft.<\/p>\n

BNP’s formula for a Microsoft rebound\u00a0 <\/p>\n

BNP’s Slowinski outlined a potential<\/a> formula that could kickstart Microsoft’s recovery on the stock market.<\/p>\n

More AI Stocks:<\/p>\n

He sees three primary catalysts, which include:<\/p>\n

Renewed confidence in Copilot<\/p>\n

Azure\u2019s consistent revenue beats<\/p>\n

A clear path to moderating capex growth.<\/p>\n

The capex narrative is particularly crucial.<\/p>\n

Microsoft\u2019s capex is on track to hit $120 billion this fiscal year, and it\u2019s expected to start leveraging aging “neocloud” partner capacity next year.<\/p>\n

In fact, a report from Futurum Group<\/a> says AI capital spending will reach $690 billion this year.<\/p>\n

“With Microsoft leveraging neocloud partner capacity next year, we may start to see capex growth slow,” Slowinski concluded.<\/p>\n

Layered with attractive free cash flow<\/a> margins north of 20%, renewed confidence in Copilot, and consistent top-line beats on the cloud side, this creates a winning formula for Microsoft’s stock to get back on track.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that other analysts have a similar view.<\/p>\n

For instance, according to Tipranks, Bernstein’s Mark Moerdler<\/a> recently reiterated an Outperform rating and $641 price target on Microsoft stock, arguing the disconnect between capex and revenue is \u201ctiming rather than any fundamental problem with the business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wall Street price targets for Microsoft stock <\/p>\n

Wall Street\u2019s average price target <\/a>for Microsoft is about $579.57, which implies roughly 34.68% upside from the current share price.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to note that analyst targets vary widely, though, with the low-end estimate at $392 and the high-end target at $730.<\/p>\n

That spread shows there\u2019s still a ton of upside in Microsoft stock, even as analysts differ on just how far it can run.<\/p>\n

Related: Goldman Sachs just found a reason to like Nvidia stock again<\/a><\/p>\n

This story was originally published by TheStreet<\/a> on Apr 18, 2026, where it first appeared in the Investing<\/a> section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Microsoft (MSFT) has found itself in unfamiliar territory. For a stock that spent much of the past decade…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12875],"tags":[13399,12883,4534,13401,13400],"class_list":["post-17819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bnp-paribas","tag-azure-growth","tag-bnp-paribas","tag-microsoft","tag-slowinski","tag-stefan-slowinski"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}