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Microsoft ( MSFT ) stock is “underappreciated” by investors who are overlooking the company’s long-term prospects in cloud computing services, Cowen analyst Gregg Moskowitz said Tuesday. Moskowitz upgraded his rating on Microsoft stock to outperform from market perform, with a price target of 58. Microsoft was up over 2%, above 51, in morning trading on the stock market today . “With shares down 10% year to date on account of disappointing fiscal Q3 earnings, the market has overreacted, with an undue focus on the short term,” Moskowitz said in a research report. He sees Office 365 revenue accelerating and long-term success for Azure cloud infrastructure services. Microsoft’s Office productivity software has reached a turning point in its transition to a subscription service from licensed software, he said. Office sales returned to growth last quarter after a series of declines during the transition, Moskowitz said. Meanwhile, Azure is poised to gain higher capacity workloads from corporate customers as IT resources shift to the public cloud, he said. Cowen’s recent survey of over 300 public cloud customers gives it confidence in Microsoft’s cloud prospects, Moskowitz said. “The survey results were clearly positive for Azure, particularly at the enterprise level,” Moskowitz said. “Among those respondents who are looking to add a new public cloud service, 59% are considering Azure, which was higher than any other offering. “Further, when restricting the data to enterprise customers, Azure held a commanding 10-point advantage over the next closest vendor (53% vs. 43% for IBM ( IBM ) SoftLayer), making it the clear preference within this category of customer.” Other competitors include Alphabet ’s ( GOOGL ) Google Cloud Platform and Amazon.com ’s ( AMZN ) Amazon Web Services. RELATED: Microsoft Sheds Low-End Mobile Phone Business Microsoft Stock Rated Hold, Seen Near Full Value In Choppy Market . Scalper1 News
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