The somewhat skewed numbers released Wednesday from the research firm IDC about lower PC shipments caused an analyst at a major financial firm to lower its Microsoft recommendation from "neutral" to "sell" today. That move was blamed as the reason why Microsoft got hit with its largest single day decline in almost two years.
Bloomberg reports that Goldman Sachs analyst Heather Bellini issued her "sell" order today and pointed at the lower PC shipment numbers as the reason for her change. Bellini stated that Microsoft's current financial situation will, in her opinion, "gradually deteriorate unless Microsoft successfully repositions itself as a more meaningful participant in the new era of consumer compute." As we reported before, IDC's numbers don't count shipments of tablet devices, such as Microsoft's Surface Pro and Surface RT tablets.
Bellini's statements were enough to take down Microsoft's stock price 4.4 percent, its biggest single day dip since August 2011. At the moment, Microsoft's stock price is up 8.3 percent since the start of 2013. Two other financial analysts announced this week they were reducing their Microsoft recommendation from "buy" to "neutral."
Microsoft is scheduled to reveal its first quarter 2013 financial results one week from today on Thursday, April 18, where we would hope to get some more information about Windows 8 sales.
Source: Bloomberg | Image via Microsoft
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