Microsoft Stock Has Grown Roughly 14-Fold Since Satya Nadella Became CEO in 2014, a 23% Annual Growth Rate That Ended 14 Years of Negative Growth. Can That Pace Continue Under Heavy AI Spending?
CEO Satya Nadella transformed Microsoft into a cloud business; now he's betting hundreds of billions on it.
Overview
Bill Gates handed over the reins of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) to Steve Ballmer in early 2000. Gates had built the software business into the world's largest company by market cap, perhaps with a little help from dot-com stock enthusiasm.
To be sure, Ballmer took over the company in a precarious position. Not only were tech stock valuations extremely frothy, but Microsoft was also fighting its antitrust lawsuit. The stock dropped more than 70% as the dot-com bubble popped, but Ballmer never recovered the company's old highs.
Details
The 2008 financial crisis took another bite out of the stock. And while it recovered somewhat with the rest of the market in the early 2010s, Microsoft's stock price was still down more than 32% from when Ballmer took over to when he departed.
Source
Originally published at www.fool.com.