Microsoft touched $4 trillion in market cap Thursday, joining Nvidia as the only two companies to reach this level.
The upward move came after the tech giant posted stronger-than-expected results. Revenues jumped 18% to $76 billion, and net income rose over 23% to $34.3 billion. The bulk of the growth came from the company’s cloud computing arm and demand for artificial intelligence.
“We’re innovating across the tech stack to help customers adapt and grow in this new era, and, this year, Azure surpassed $75 billion in revenue, up 34%, driven by growth across all workloads” said CEO Satya Nadella.
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Exchange-traded funds that count Microsoft as a large holding are benefiting from the stock’s 26% gain this year, which is outperforming the Nasdaq Composite’s 9.5% rise.
T-Rex 2X long Microsoft is up over 44% annually, and it seeks results that are “200% of the daily performance of MSFT,” according to the fund.
The Direxion Daily MSFT Bull 2X and Bear 1X ETF were also active. MSFU, the bull bets, has advanced over 43% this year, while the MSFD bear play had its most active trading day ever.
More traditional stock ETFs, including iShares Global Tech ETF, which owns 17.5% of the stock, is up 13% this year. Vanguard’s Information Technology ETF owns 14.8%, and Fidelity MSCI Information Technology Index ETF owns 15%. Both have gained 11% this year. All three list Microsoft as the second-largest holding behind Nvidia.
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Microsoft was founded in April 1975 by Paul Allen and Bill Gates, who was CEO. Gates is the 13th richest person in the world with a net worth of $116 billion, according to Forbes. Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is No. 8 with a net worth of $148 billion.