When analysts at Morgan Stanley come out believing your company is best positioned to take advantage of a change in the market, you might expect share prices to surge. That did not happen for tech giant Microsoft (MSFT) today, as Microsoft shares were down modestly in Thursday afternoon’s trading.
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Word from the third quarter of 2025 CIO survey was good news for Microsoft. Morgan Stanley, which conducted the study, noted that Microsoft “…remains the clearest beneficiary of GenAI spend.” Further, it noted, “Microsoft remains best positioned to capture incremental share of GenAI spend and IT budgets as workloads move to the cloud.”
With more and more businesses altering budgets to focus on digital initiatives like cloud computing and artificial intelligence, Microsoft has tools to help make those objectives happen. That means Microsoft is in line to land more of that budget for itself. In fact, 33% of responding CIOs believe that Microsoft will land the largest share of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) spending, which is actually more than twice as high as the next closest competitor.
But What About the Games?
While there have been several issues surrounding Xbox Game Pass of late, Microsoft recently rolled out an announcement that had nothing to do with the platform’s pricing, and everything to do with what the platform would actually offer. Several new games were announced for the October lineup, featuring several noteworthy releases.
October will see the arrival of Supermarket Simulator, as well as The Casting of Frank Stone. October will close with the arrival of Evil West and Ninja Gaiden 4. However, some games will also be departing the platform, including Cocoon, Core Keeper, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed.
Is Microsoft a Buy, Hold or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on MSFT stock based on 33 Buys and one Hold assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 26.21% rally in its share price over the past year, the average MSFT price target of $629.22 per share implies 21.23% upside potential.
