Morgan Stanley raises its price target for Microsoft from $72 to $80

Morgan Stanley analyst Keith Weiss raised his price target for Microsoft from $72 to $80 yesterday. He also noted that Microsoft Stock could go as high as $102, a 46% increase from its current stock price. In a note sent to Morgan Stanley clients, Keith Weiss wrote that 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).”

Microsoft is increasing its cloud market share with Azure, which could increase financial earnings. Also, Microsoft’s productivity offering Office 365 is gaining more market share leading to increasing monetization. Recently, Microsoft’s machine learning products and services are also gaining traction in the market which will also contribute in increasing revenue. Weiss noted that Microsoft’s expansion is cloud market could add up to $110 billion in market value.

Apart from the cloud offerings, Microsoft’s consumer products and services will also contribute to financial earnings in this upcoming year. Microsoft recently announced new Surface products including Surface Laptop, new Xbox One X console and Windows 10 S OS targeting Chromebooks in the education market. With the strongest product line-up in Microsoft’s history, Microsoft’s stock could be one of the fastest growing tech stocks in the coming months.

Microsoft stock is up approximately 12% this year and it currently trades at $69.91. Microsoft declared a quarterly dividend of $0.39 per share last week and the dividend is payable September 14, 2017 to shareholders of record on August 17, 2017.