What's interesting is that Microsoft is now more of a leverage story.
If Oracle did $1.2 billion in licenses and reports earnings of 15 cents a share, the stock will rip on that,
Larry will go out of there in a pine box.
Particularly in the software sector, so much of what's going on with these stocks now has nothing to do with the fundamentals. It all has to do with this M&A activity that's going on and the uncertainty around it.
Oracle is betting on PeopleSoft stumbling sometime next year but that's unlikely,
I wonder if it isn't the impact of Apple and other players,
Most of the news in terms of earnings is out there. If they were to lower guidance dramatically or take a much more negative tone, that would be different, but I think in light of all they've got going on with PeopleSoft they're unlikely to do that.
Most of the news in terms of earnings is out there, ... If they were to lower guidance dramatically or take a much more negative tone, that would be different, but I think in light of all they've got going on with PeopleSoft they're unlikely to do that.
Microsoft would think twice about spending more than $20 billion. The probability of a deal happening is low.
Microsoft is moving away from some of these strategic media investments they had made in the '90s so they can focus their energies and resources on the Internet-based computing trends that are occurring right now and could potentially be harmful to their core business.
The quarter was very strong. If we could see another good quarter of applications revenue then that would demonstrate to people that the PeopleSoft acquisition made sense.
We are really seeing a change in the landscape of tech for the first time in five years.
The database business is a huge business, quite mature. That's where we need to see the growth, even though we look to the see the applications asset of the business.
We've had this lull before the new products come, so we're going to need to see those new products driving double-digit earnings growth again.
This news could be enough to move the stock higher. People have been looking for reasons to buy Microsoft. It's still undervalued.
We'd hoped to see a little more upside.
SAP is clearly taking share in the applications market and that's hurting PeopleSoft and Oracle, ... This is exactly the time for investors to get involved in SAP.
They may have strategies they don't want us to know about. Maybe they're right, but they've created uncertainty around these expenses.
It was shocking. They gave this guidance, but the stock didn't go down much right away because no one believed it could be that far off. The expenses are wildly higher than anyone had expected.
Investors were thinking that these new products were going to return Microsoft to the same levels of growth and profitability as it had in its glory days.
These are pretty decent numbers given where expectations were for the company.
These are billion dollar businesses that are just marginally profitable now. As profits continue to ramp up, they could contribute to Microsoft's bottom line in a meaningful way.