Almost a year ago, we shared Morgan Stanley analyst Keith Weiss" prediction of a meteoric rise in Microsoft"s stock price to $102 following its increasingly fortified position in the enterprise and cloud computing markets.
Today, Microsoft has almost achieved that impressive target of an almost 45% rise in stock price, with its shares currently priced at $98. Alongside shoring up Microsoft"s position as a dominant player in the market, this has also allowed the company to slightly edge out ahead of Google"s parent company, Alphabet, in terms of market valuation. The two companies stand at a market cap of $753 billion and $739 billion, respectively, the first time Microsoft has held an advantage in over three years since Google restructured itself.
Both companies have set their eyes on a trillion dollar valuation in the near future, though leading the pack in this race are, of course, Apple and Amazon, which currently have a market cap of $924 billion and $783 billion, respectively.
Amazon, in particular, has shown rapid growth in both its share price and its market capitalisation over the last few years, and may indeed be poised to neutralise Apple"s impressive lead over other tech companies in this race. Microsoft, for its part, has been doing well with its cloud infrastructure in particular and is steadily gaining on Amazon Web Services, the market leader at the moment and the cannibalisation between Microsoft, Amazon and Google will likely determine which company achieves the distinction first.
Source: Business Insider