The ex-dividend date came and went this week with barely a ripple, which is saying something for a company that just handed shareholders a 23rd consecutive annual increase. Microsoft’s quarterly payout now stands at $0.91 per share, up 9.6% from the prior quarter, with the $6.76 billion distribution scheduled for September 10. The yield? A modest 0.93% — hardly the stuff of income-investor fever dreams, but the consistency tells its own story: two decades of uninterrupted annual hikes, averaging roughly 10% growth over the trailing twelve months.
Yet the real narrative driving this stock has little to do with dividends. It’s a tale of two bets — one on cloud infrastructure, the other on a stake in OpenAI that Bill Ackman believes the market is badly mispricing.
A Recovery That Still Has Ground to Cover
The Frankfurt-listed shares closed Thursday at €412.05, down 0.6% on the day and off 3.7% for the week. But zoom out to the 30-day window and the picture flips dramatically: a 20% surge that has clawed back much of the first half’s losses. Even so, the stock remains roughly 14% below its October 2025 record of €478.10 — a gap that looks less like a fresh downturn and more like a pause for breath after a vigorous rally.
That rally has a name attached to it. Pershing Square built its initial position in February 2026, stepping in after Microsoft shares stumbled on quarterly results that raised questions about cloud growth and the scale of capital expenditures. By August, that stake had swelled to $2.4 billion — approximately 15% of Pershing Square’s entire portfolio.
Ackman’s argument centers on Microsoft’s 27% ownership of OpenAI, which he values independently at roughly $200 billion — equivalent to about 7% of Microsoft’s total market capitalization. The market, in his view, simply isn’t pricing that asset in. It’s a thesis that has helped underpin sentiment, even as the year-to-date performance remains in negative territory.
The Numbers Behind the Narrative
The fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 delivered revenue of $90 billion, up about 17.75% year over year. Cloud revenue climbed 27% to $59.3 billion, powered by Azure’s 43% growth — an acceleration from the 40% posted the prior quarter. For the full year, Microsoft booked revenue above $331.8 billion, an 18% increase, with net income of $133.8 billion and free cash flow of $67 billion.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Microsoft?
To put that scale in perspective: Automatic Data Processing, a company in a completely different weight class, carries a market capitalization of $110 billion. Microsoft’s stands at $3.6 trillion. Yet the giant is growing at a faster percentage clip than the niche specialist — the kind of stat that defines this earnings season.
Copilot, meanwhile, has crossed 30 million paid users, a sequential doubling by the company’s count. The backlog of contracted future revenue sits at $678 billion, up 84% from a year ago. For the current quarter, Microsoft guides to 33–34% growth in the Intelligent Cloud segment, with Azure expected to expand 45% at constant currency.
The Skepticism That Won’t Quite Fade
For all the momentum, the counterarguments persist. A SIFMA survey of economists from the first half of 2026 found nearly six in ten respondents citing a correction in AI investment as the biggest downside risk to the US economy this year. The combined capex of Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle reached $412 billion in 2025 — 1.3% of American GDP. When a handful of companies carry that much weight, every earnings release becomes a referendum on the entire AI buildout.
There are also smaller signals worth watching. Insider sales have occurred seven times over the past six months, including executive Althoff’s disposal of 25,500 shares worth $12 million. Such moves often reflect tax planning or personal liquidity needs rather than bearish conviction, but they add texture to a stock that has run hard and fast.
The analyst community remains firmly in the bull camp: six buy ratings, zero sells, and a median price target of $540 across 25 analysts. That target implies meaningful upside from current levels — and it rests on the same dual bet investors are making: that Azure’s growth trajectory holds and that the OpenAI stake delivers the hidden value Ackman insists is there.
With the September 10 payout now locked in, attention shifts back to operations. The question isn’t whether Microsoft can sustain its dividend — that seems as close to certain as anything in tech. It’s whether the company can keep converting its AI ambitions into the kind of numbers that justify a $3.6 trillion valuation. So far, the answer has been yes. The coming quarters will test whether that holds.
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