For those who turn to tech stock leader Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and its Teams app for getting together with colleagues, today was a big day. Microsoft rolled out a new version and, with it, detailed monthly average users (MAUs) for the tool. Investors, however, weren’t particularly pleased, as Microsoft slipped slightly in Monday’s trading.
First off, the big score: Microsoft revealed that 280 million users a month are actively putting Teams to work. That figure is up from 270 million back in January and up from 250 million in July 2021. It’s also said to be about 14 times the users that Salesforce’s (NASDAQ:CRM) Slack boasts. Either way, that’s a lot of workers, but Microsoft didn’t stop there. It also noted that it was “…reimagining Teams from the ground up” to ultimately produce a newer, better Teams. The improved version would require fewer resources to run and also work better overall.
The new version of Teams is not only twice as fast as the previous versions, but it also requires just half the computing resources to run. Thus, those who keep Teams running in the background while working on documents, spreadsheets, or whatever will see better performance while they work. It also uses 70% less disc space, allowing more documents and spreadsheets on your local drives.
Overall, Microsoft stock is considered a Strong Buy by analyst consensus based on 26 Buy recommendations against four Holds and one Sell recommendation. Further, with an average price target of $292.48, Microsoft stock comes with 5.83% upside potential.
