For most investors, how much a stock's price changes over time is important. Not only can it impact your investment portfolio, but it can also help you compare investment results across sectors and industries.
Another factor that can influence investors is FOMO, or the fear of missing out, especially with tech giants and popular consumer-facing stocks.
What if you'd invested in Microsoft (MSFT) ten years ago? It may not have been easy to hold on to MSFT for all that time, but if you did, how much would your investment be worth today?
Microsoft's Business In-Depth
With that in mind, let's take a look at Microsoft's main business drivers.
Microsoft Corporation is one of the largest broad-based technology providers in the world. The company dominates the PC software market with more than 73% of the market share for desktop operating systems.
The company’s Microsoft 365 application suite is one of the most popular productivity software globally. It is also one of the prominent public cloud providers that can deliver a wide variety of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solutions at scale.
Redmond, WA-based Microsoft’s products include operating systems, cross-device productivity applications, server applications, business solution applications, desktop and server management tools, software development tools, and video games. Its software solutions and hardware devices are playing an important role in developing the metaverse.
The company designs and sells PCs, tablets, gaming and entertainment consoles, other intelligent devices, and related accessories. Through Azure, it offers cloud-based solutions that provide customers with software, services, platforms and content.
Microsoft reported revenues of $281.7 billion in fiscal 2025. The company reports operations under three segments: Productivity & Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud and More Personal Computing.
Productivity & Business Processes accounted for 42.9% of fiscal 2025 revenues. The segment offers productivity and collaboration tools and services including Office 365, Dynamics business solutions, Teams, Relationship Sales solution, Power Platform and LinkedIn.
Intelligent Cloud, which includes Azure cloud services, contributed 37.7% of fiscal 2025 revenues.
Microsoft closed its acquisition of Activision Blizzard on October 13, 2023 for $75.4 billion. Activision Blizzard has been integrated as a sibling division to Xbox Game Studios and ZeniMax Media.
More Personal Computing represented 19.4% of fiscal 2025 revenues. The segment comprises mainly the Windows, Gaming (Xbox hardware, Xbox software and services), Devices (Surface, PC accessories, and other intelligent devices) and Search (Bing and Microsoft Advertising) businesses.
Bottom Line
While anyone can invest, building a lucrative investment portfolio takes research, patience, and a little bit of risk. If you had invested in Microsoft ten years ago, you're probably feeling pretty good about your investment today.
A $1000 investment made in October 2015 would be worth $11,306.31, or a 1,030.63% gain, as of October 7, 2025, according to our calculations. Investors should note that this return excludes dividends but includes price increases.
Compare this to the S&P 500's rally of 240.43% and gold's return of 232.16% over the same time frame.
Analysts are anticipating more upside for MSFT.
Microsoft capitalizes on AI business momentum and Copilot adoption alongside accelerating Azure cloud infrastructure expansion. Recently, MSFT introduced its first proprietary AI models, MAI-Voice-1 and MAI-1-preview. Microsoft projects Azure growth of 37% for fiscal first-quarter 2026. Strong Office 365 Commercial demand has been propeling Productivity and Business Processes revenue growth. ARPU is increasing through E5 and M365 Copilot uptake across key segments. Strategic execution through expanding scale and enterprise customer growth is driving non-AI services. Xbox revenues are benefiting from strength across third-party and first-party content offerings. We expect fiscal 2026 net sales to grow 12.9% from fiscal 2025. However, elevated operating expenses and Azure investments amid intensifying cloud competition remain headwinds.
The stock is up 6.10% over the past four weeks, and no earnings estimate has gone lower in the past two months, compared to 4 higher, for fiscal 2025. The consensus estimate has moved up as well.
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Microsoft Corporation (MSFT): Free Stock Analysis ReportThis article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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