Microsoft stock climbs on $60B buyback program, dividend raise

Shares of Microsoft (MSFT) are climbing in pre-market hours after the tech giant's board approved a $60 billion share buyback program and agreed to raise the dividend by 10% to $0.83 per share as of November 21. Morning Brief Hosts Seana Smith and Brad Smith report more on the story and analyze the stock's performance over the last two years.

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This post was written by Melanie Riehl

Video Transcript

Let's talk a little Microsoft here.

Microsoft shares taking higher the tech Giants board approving a $60 billion share buyback programme, plus raising the dividend by 10%.

As of November 20.

1st shareholders will receive a dividend of 83 cents per share.

That is up from 75 cents a share previously here.

And, of course, as we continue to track what Microsoft shares have done over the course of this year, I mean, it's been a A a bang up type of year for Microsoft to really double down on some of the major commitments that they've made, whether that be an open a i or whether that be, in this case in itself here and over the course of the year to date activity companies still holding on to gains about 16%.

But I think for the vision more long term, this is a move that you typically see a lot of executives, C suite boards and acting when they wanna securitize some of their own strains, or at least confidence in their company performance and the investments that they're making and signal that to the street as well.

Yeah, they're very confident for the road ahead, right?

That certainly is, um and and and and rightfully so when you take a look at some of the moves that Microsoft has made over the last several months, the last several quarters when you take a look at the numbers free cash flow was up 18% year over year, reflecting that higher Capex to support Cloud and a I offering.

Just yesterday they had announced a new range of A I tools here.

So you talk about the fact that they are now viewed as this leader with the A I space a partnership with Open A I certainly giving them a massive edge versus some of their competitors.

So the fact that we are seeing this repurchase plan replacing that previous $60 billion programme, the buyback agreement still less than 2% of Microsoft's market value.

So that's very important to point out, too, and also that just illustrates how far this stock has come.

We had the two year T up there.

You had gains of 76%.

We're looking to further move to the upside here this morning of just about 1.5% in extended trading