Topic: How To Invest

Dividend Advisor Hotline – Friday, July 16, 2021

Article Excerpt

MICROSOFT CORP., $280.75, Nasdaq symbol MSFT, is a buy. The company is the world’s largest software provider. Its Windows operating system powers about 80% of the world’s personal computers. Microsoft last raised your quarterly dividend by 9.8% with the December 2020 payment, to $0.56 a share from $0.51. The stock has jumped 35% in the past year, which is why the new annual rate of $2.24 yields just 0.8%. In October 2019, the U.S. Department of Defense awarded Microsoft a contract to upgrade its computer systems to a cloud computing platform. Called Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), the 10-year deal was potentially worth $10 billion. To put that in context, Microsoft’s annual revenue is roughly $160 billion. The Defense Department recently cancelled the JEDI contract. It now plans to split its cloud computing project among several providers instead of giving the work to just one. As a result, Microsoft will have to submit a new bid. It also faces strong competition from Amazon Web Services,…