MSFT - Microsoft Corporation
138.24 -0.17 (-0.12%)
After hours: 6:18PM EDT
| Previous close | 136.13 |
| Open | 137.85 |
| Bid | 138.23 x 1200 |
| Ask | 138.36 x 1000 |
| Day's range | 136.88 - 138.55 |
| 52-week range | 93.96 - 141.68 |
| Volume | 19,702,287 |
| Avg. volume | 24,384,423 |
| Market cap | 1.057T |
| Beta (3Y monthly) | 0.97 |
| PE ratio (TTM) | 27.35 |
| EPS (TTM) | 5.06 |
| Earnings date | 22 Oct 2019 - 28 Oct 2019 |
| Forward dividend & yield | 1.84 (1.38%) |
| Ex-dividend date | 2019-08-14 |
| 1y target est | 154.41 |
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ECB Says the Next European Bank Hack Is Just a Matter of Time
(Bloomberg) -- Want the lowdown on European markets? In your inbox before the open, every day. Sign up here.A senior official at the European Central Bank warned that banks embracing external data storage and other digital technology need to face an uncomfortable truth: there’s a good chance they’ll get hacked.“There will be accidents, especially in the cloud,” Korbinian Ibel, a director general at the ECB’s supervisory arm, said in an interview. “It’s not that clouds are more vulnerable, they’re actually often better protected than in-house systems, but they’re seen as juicy targets.”So far, Europe has been spared the kind of hack that hit Capital One Financial Corp., which said last month that data from about 100 million people in the U.S. was illegally accessed. That may change as the region’s banks face increasing pressure to reduce costs with new technology and make up for the squeeze on revenue from lower interest rates.European banks already use some services of companies like Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. Germany’s Deutsche Bank AG eventually wants to move the majority of its applications to the cloud -- giant external data centers -- from what it has called “expensive and inflexible physical servers.” For now, European banks tend to avoid putting “highly confidential data” on public clouds, said Ibel.“We see the benefits” of cloud computing, Ibel said. “The rule is that the banker is always responsible for their data and services.”Failings can have consequences. The ECB can tell riskier lenders to hold more capital, squeezing their returns, or order potentially costly qualitative measures such as improving how users access computer systems.Banks have responded to the digital revolution by hiring tech experts, sometimes even naming them to their top management bodies. That’s good, but it doesn’t go far enough, said Ibel.“It’s not enough to have one person as the IT expert,” he said. “You need a common understanding at board level of the needs and risks of IT.”To contact the reporter on this story: Nicholas Comfort in Frankfurt at ncomfort1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Dale Crofts at dcrofts@bloomberg.net, Christian BaumgaertelFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
ByteDance Invests in Chinese Wikipedia-like Site in Search Push
(Bloomberg) -- ByteDance Inc. has invested in a prominent Chinese Wikipedia-like platform, stepping up its internet search challenge to rival Baidu Inc.A unit of ByteDance, the world’s most valuable startup according to CB Insights, now holds 22% of the registered capital of Baike.com, according to a recent update on a Chinese government website that publishes company registration information. Baike, which means encyclopedia in Chinese, is the country’s second largest such reference platform and was founded in 2005 by Chief Executive Officer Pan Haidong. Pan is no longer listed as a shareholder of his company, the website shows.As China’s internet shifts from desktop to mobile, ByteDance is increasingly chipping away at advertising sales from Baidu, drawing users to its umbrella of apps from news aggregation to short video platforms. It’s also moving into Baidu’s core search engine business, launching Toutiao Search. That already features entries from Baike.com and started out as a function within ByteDance’s popular news app of the same name. It’s being built into a Google-like service and the company has said it’s recruited from Google, Baidu and Microsoft Corp.’s Bing.Baidu uses its own Wikipedia-like Baidu Baike, which is the market leader. Wikipedia is blocked in all languages in China.Representatives from ByteDance and Baike.com didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Baidu had previously declined to comment on ByteDance’s search service, but referred to remarks by a company executive who said Baidu has successfully fended off new entrants in the past.To contact the reporter on this story: Zheping Huang in Hong Kong at zhuang245@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Edwin Chan at echan273@bloomberg.net, Colum MurphyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Masa’s Visionary Sequel Has a Desperate Look
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- It looks like SoftBank Group Corp.’s Masayoshi Son may be struggling to start his next epic journey.A month after announcing an eclectic mix of investors for its Vision Fund 2, SoftBank is leaning on its own employees for cash, planning to lend them as much as much as $20 billion to buy stakes in the venture-capital vehicle, the Wall Street Journal reported at the weekend. The report adds to signs of possible funding gaps in the $108 billion cash pile Son is targeting. SoftBank itself is already putting in $38 billion.Add the potential contribution from employees, and we’re looking at 54% of the money coming from directly inside the SoftBank family. Son may account for $15 billion of that $20 billion target, the Journal reported. SoftBank is looking to charge staff interest of around 5% and in most cases will require little money down, the newspaper said. That hints at desperation.Encouraging, or even enabling, workers to own stock in their employer isn’t so unusual. Companies do that often, and it’s common practice within the hedge fund industry. There’s an argument to be made for allowing employees to have skin in the game, which then aligns corporate and employee incentives.Yet this doesn’t feel like a simple case of share and share alike. When SoftBank announced the size of Vision Fund 2 on July 27 and listed some of its participants, the lack of an external cornerstone investor stood out. That’s in stark contrast to news of the first Vision Fund back in October 2016. While both press releases spoke of memorandums of understanding, rather than signed pledges, the first incarnation had a clear lead investor – Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund – and a specific figure: $45 billion.The 2016 statement even had a quote from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who’s the chairman of PIF. (This connection now casts a dark shadow over the Vision Fund given Saudi links to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.) The original Vision Fund later grabbed another $15 billion from Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Co.So far, however, there’s no big outside name behind the second fund. With the news of loans to employees, it looks like SoftBank itself will take on the cornerstone role. No corporate is likely to pledge more and the only sovereign the July announcement mentioned was Kazakhstan. Beyond that one nation, the investors appear to fall into two categories – industry buddies such as Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. and long-time friend Foxconn Technology Group – and a collection of Japanese banks. It’s telling that not one of these was quoted or had a dollar amount put against their name. Having two big outside backers and a slew of unicorns to pick from made raising the first fund relatively easy, as I noted previously. The lack of those rich uncles and the slowing pace of unicorn births mean Fund 2 doesn't look quite as compelling.In the end, SoftBank will probably scrape together the money it needs by casting a wider net and calling in favors. The company will use plenty of FOMO (fear of missing out) to try to convince fence-sitters to pull out the checkbook. But when it does get there, I suspect few investors will big as enthused about Son’s latest big adventure as they were for the first. To contact the author of this story: Tim Culpan at tculpan1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Matthew Brooker at mbrooker1@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Tim Culpan is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. He previously covered technology for Bloomberg News.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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Motley FoolIs It Time for Microsoft to Spin Off Skype?
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Pentagon’s $10 Billion Brain Is Frozen by a Contracting Scandal
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- In the latest twist in the fraught competition for the Department of Defense’s $10 billion cloud-computing project, the Pentagon Inspector General’s Office announced a new investigation into whether there have been improprieties or corruption in the contracting process thus far. This probe, described to me as a very significant undertaking by Pentagon insiders, will complement a review already being conducted by new Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.The cloud project is formally known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure or, in a nod to “Star Wars” geeks, JEDI. It would provide a single managerial system and a single repository for storage of the department’s incomprehensibly vast data streams. As the controversy hit, the contract was reportedly about to be awarded, with the final competitors being Amazon Web Services Inc (the heavy, heavy favorite) and Microsoft Corp.The twin investigations were spurred by pressure from three sources: disgruntled competitors who felt they were out of the running; Congressional actors representing districts and states from where those competitors have a presence; and the Oval Office itself. President Donald Trump said in mid-July that he intended to review the JEDI contracting after receiving “tremendous complaints” about the process from “some of the great companies in the world,” including IBM, Microsoft and Oracle – each of which bid on the JEDI contract.None of this, other than direct interference by the commander in chief, is particularly out of the ordinary for big defense acquisitions, given the byzantine procurement process in the Pentagon. As a newly selected one-star rear admiral in 2000, I was assigned to manage a complex agency-wide telecommunications contract that included creating a new constellation of satellites. By the time it was finally awarded, I had long transferred out of the Pentagon. And in 2013, as I was a grizzled four-star Admiral about to finish up my career, I was still wondering why the satellite constellation wasn’t yet fully operational. The short answer is that at the nexus of big money, political influence and uncertain technology, delays are a certainty.All of this begs the questions of why the U.S. military is pursuing this system, and how it can be brought on line rapidly – by whomever eventually wins the contract.JEDI will be an absolutely vital part of America’s future warfighting capability, especially in the increasingly complex new 5G environment. At heart, the vast cloud would allow a much more efficient information-technology system, replacing the hodgepodge of thousands of hand-tooled, inefficient networks that exist today. This is especially critical for the military, where so many personnel transfer every two to three years, often taking with them a hands-on knowledge of an individual network or complex of software. For a vast organization like the Department of Defense -- the largest “company” in the world – JEDI’s efficiency at scale will be crucial to optimizing expensive resources and operating efficiently.It’s not just about efficiency, though: JEDI should vastly improve resiliency and security. Instead of individual networks and organizations backing up their information locally, everything is stored in a much more defendable cloud structure - just as your personal data and photographs likely exist in the Microsoft or Apple Inc clouds today. The data can be seamlessly transferred, even in the intense crucible of combat. Cybersecurity experts tell us that there is great strength in reducing the number of individual portals that can be attacked and overcome; streamlining and unifying the defenses of the entire department make sense. This reduction of “threat surfaces” is crucial.Finally, from an operator’s perspective, there is great allure in one-stop shopping to stream data (a sort of military Netflix,), to record and store it, to create simple systems to “patch” software, and to build an infrastructure that permits constant monitoring of the entire department’s networks. Lieutenant General Jack Shanahan, head of the Pentagon’s Artificial Intelligence Center, commented recently on the operational capabilities necessary for the emerging era of great power competition, with China in particular.“Imagine the speed of operations in a fight in the Pacific, where you just do not have time to figure out, ‘How do I get my data, clean my data, move it from point A to point B.’” Shanahan said. “If I’m a warfighter, I want as much data as you could possibly give me. Let my algorithms sort through it at machine speed. It’s really hard for me to do that without an enterprise cloud solution.” His comments were echoed by the department’s chief information officer, Dana Deasy, in a rare on-the-record co-briefing to the press they held last week.In order to move quickly to find efficiencies, create new resiliency, and provide a single point of contact for all IT operations, the Department of Defense needs to thoroughly but quickly complete these investigations. If there are real instances of malfeasance, they should be uncovered and the perpetrators punished forthwith. Frankly, Secretary Esper has an unattractive set of options, including starting the competition over; pressing forward to award despite the external pressure; or searching for some middle ground that may satisfy nobody. Whether he can power through all the sand in the gears here will be the first test of his leadership abilities, and will be among the most important he will face.In the likely scenario that all this smoke reveals not much fire but rather disgruntled competitors and political angst (and a strong component of anti-Amazon influence from the White House, where Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos is despised), Esper should press through to a contract award as soon as is legally appropriate. Warfighting in the 21st century will be “brain on brain” combat, and a large, singular cloud structure is the gray matter the U.S. military needs.To contact the author of this story: James Stavridis at jstavridis@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.James Stavridis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a retired U.S. Navy admiral and former supreme allied commander of NATO, and dean emeritus of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is also an operating executive consultant at the Carlyle Group and chairs the board of counselors at McLarty Associates.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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