{"id":646320,"date":"2026-08-19T23:55:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T23:55:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/646320\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T23:55:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T23:55:28","slug":"microsoft-stock-rises-as-678-billion-backlog-supports-ai-spending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/646320\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Stock Rises as $678 Billion Backlog Supports AI Spending"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This article first appeared on GuruFocus<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT<\/a>), the enterprise-software, cloud and artificial-intelligence giant, gained<\/a> approximately 0.6% to $484.30 Wednesday morning as falling Treasury yields pulled buyers back into mega-cap technology. But forget the small bounce for a second. The bigger Microsoft story is sitting underneath the stock: Azure is ripping higher, AI demand is pouring in, and customers have already committed hundreds of billions of dollars to Microsoft’s ecosystem. <\/p>\n

The numbers are huge. Microsoft reported<\/a> quarterly revenue of $90 billion, up 18%, while operating income jumped 18% to $40.6 billion. Azure and other cloud-services revenue surged 43%, annual Azure revenue blasted through $100 billion for the first time, and commercial remaining performance obligations exploded 84% to $678 billion. That $678 billion is the number that matters. Microsoft is not spending aggressively on AI infrastructure while waiting for customers to show up. A massive wave of contracted business is already waiting to become revenue. <\/p>\n

\"Microsoft<\/a> Microsoft Stock Rises as $678 Billion Backlog Supports AI Spending \u00b7 us.finance.gurufocus <\/p>\n

And the valuation picture just got more interesting. Microsoft traded at $485.71 on Aug. 19 versus a GF Value estimate of $577.29, leaving the stock 15.86% below GF Value. That does not automatically make Microsoft cheap, but the gap stands out when Azure is growing 43% and the commercial backlog is sitting at $678 billion. Now comes the hard part: execution. Microsoft must build enough AI capacity to feed that demand without letting data-center spending, depreciation and infrastructure costs eat away at the economics. If it can nail that equation, Wednesday’s 0.6% rebound could be the least interesting number in the Microsoft story. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), the enterprise-software, cloud and artificial-intelligence giant, gained approximately 0.6% to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,289,290,18,19,17,305,9988,82],"class_list":["post-646320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-microsoft","tag-quarterly-revenue","tag-technology"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117124879416237797","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}