Expectations of a dividend boost, a strong product pipeline and recovering investor sentiment have fueled Microsoft Corp.'s (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) 6 percent stock rally in the past month, making it the top-performing large-cap U.S. stock, analysts said on Wednesday. The world's largest software maker, once a technology growth leader whose market value more than doubled every two years during the 1990s, has seen its share price hover mostly between $23 and $30 over the past three years.
That lackluster performance has frustrated company executives and analysts, who say the software giant still has room to grow despite becoming a huge company with yearly revenues of more than $40 billion.
Alan Davis, analyst with McAdams Wright Ragen, said company executives may have finally started to convince investors that the company can keep growing while containing costs.
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