It's not just Amazon that will make money from cloud computing and artificial intelligence, according to Wall Street. <\/p>\n
Morgan Stanley believes Microsoft's Azure business will thrive riding the same hot technology trends. <\/p>\n
The firm reiterated its overweight rating on Microsoft shares, predicting the company will report profits ahead of expectations next year due to cloud computing demand. <\/p>\n
Microsoft's \"top line drivers include the Azure (Microsoft emerging as a public cloud winner), data center (share gains and positive pricing trends), and O365 [Office 365] (base growth and per user pricing lift),\" analyst Keith Weiss wrote in a note to clients Monday. <\/p>\n
\"With a strengthening secular positioning and rationalization of underperforming portions of the solution portfolio, Microsoft is back to showing durable double-digit EPS growth and investors should be willing to pay a higher multiple for that growth,\" he added. <\/p>\n
Weiss raised his price target for Microsoft to $80 from $72, representing 14 percent upside from Friday's close. <\/p>\n
The analyst cited how the growing \"machine learning\" [artificial intelligence] trend will spur demand for the company's Azure cloud computing services and it could add up to $110 billion in market value for Microsoft. <\/p>\n
As a result, Weiss estimates Microsoft will generate fiscal 2018 earnings per share of $3.45 compared with the Wall Street consensus for $3.32. <\/p>\n
\"Windows 10 gives Microsoft an improved story on tablets, a new leg of rev. growth and downstream opps. for synergy with the Surface, Xbox, and the device ecosystem,\" he wrote.<\/p>\n
CNBC's Michael Bloom contributed to this story. <\/p>\n
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Microsoft will ride artificial intelligence, cloud computing to higher ... - CNBC<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It's not just Amazon that will make money from cloud computing and artificial intelligence, according to Wall Street. Continue reading