In retrospect, buying Microsoft (MSFT) earlier this year for $18.39 was a no-brainer. The company has an undeniably strong cash position and even pays a decent dividend. The stock has been in the upper $20s last I checked due to results announced last Friday.
Most of MSFT's good news stems from aggressive cost-cutting. But there's more good news. Windows 7 has been getting great reviews. And since many PC users never bothered to get Vista, there's plenty of pent-up demand for a new PC operating system. Or there should be. No, check that. There is pent-up demand but with consumers and businesses holding down costs wherever possible, we could still see surprisingly lackluster sales. Hey, anything is possible these days, folks.
Another winner of sorts may turn out to be Bing, Microsoft's search engine. It too has been winning rave reviews -- including from the likes of Fred Hickey. I've tried Bing and think it's fine, but I'll freely admit that I haven't made it my default search engine yet (I still use Google).
For now, I'm not trimming my MSFT position. I think the stock has more to go.
And we'll see more upside -- especially if we can get a recovery in business spending. I don't know how far cost-cutting can take us here.
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