Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) shares rose 1.4% in premarket trading on Monday as investment firm Guggenheim upgraded the tech giant, citing its artificial intelligence prospects.
“We are upgrading the shares of MSFT to Buy from Neutral and introducing a price target of $586, representing 12% upside from current levels,” analyst John DiFucci wrote in a note to clients. “In a time when investors struggle to separate AI beneficiaries from AI casualties, it’s clear to us that Microsoft, along with the other hyperscalers, is a beneficiary. That’s referring to the benefits to Azure, but we believe Microsoft has a near monopoly in the Productivity Suite market with its Office offering and there has been, and will be able to continue to directly monetize AI offerings (namely Copilot) tied to that product suite. Finally, we believe Windows is also set to outperform consensus numbers over the near to medium tern, and this second monopoly likely still contributes close to 20% of Microsoft’s profit, though it’s only about 10% (before re-segmentation in FQ424) of total revenue.”
