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Microsoft ( MSFT ) shares climbed Tuesday on bullish notes from two investment banks and expectations for a news-filled Build developers conference, which starts Wednesday in San Francisco. Microsoft stock rose 2.2% to 54.71 on the stock market today . It has climbed 13.5% since hitting a five-month low of 48.19 on Feb. 8. The stock hit an all-time high of 56.85 on Dec. 29. UBS analyst Brent Thill reiterated his buy rating on Microsoft stock, with a 12-month price target of 60. Pacific Crest Securities analyst Brendan Barnicle maintained his overweight rating with a price target of 65. Thill said Microsoft’s commercial cloud business was on pace to lap the company’s targets. “Microsoft continues to execute on a balanced story, with the commercial cloud businesses (including Azure, Office 365, Dynamics) leading the charge,” he said in a research note Monday. Microsoft’s commercial cloud business ended the December quarter with an annual revenue run rate of over $9.4 billion. That’s up more than 70% year over year, with more than 350 of the Fortune 500 companies now using two or more Microsoft cloud offerings, Thill said. Microsoft Cloud Sales A Year Ahead Of Goal The business is well ahead of schedule in its efforts to reach management’s stated goal of a $20 billion run rate in the fiscal year ending June 2018, he said. Microsoft’s goal assumes a 35% compound annual growth rate. “We note that this growth has been entirely organic (with no major acquisitions boosting numbers), and that at the current pace (about 70% year-over-year growth), the company would reach this target about one year ahead of schedule,” Thill said. Cloud computing revenue has the benefit of being highly recurring and should be higher-margin over time, he said. Microsoft is going to promote its Internet cloud computing accomplishments at the three-day Build conference, as well as at the Envision IT Conference in New Orleans April 4-6. At Build, Microsoft also is expected to discuss its Windows platform and its HoloLens holographic computing system . “We expect positive updates on the Universal Windows Platform, mobile and Azure,” Barnicle said in a report Monday. “Overall, we expect fewer new-product announcements than last year, but more insight into the direction Microsoft is taking with its products.” At Google’s cloud developers conference last week, there were few indications that Microsoft was losing cloud market share to the Alphabet ( GOOGL ) company. “We spoke with systems integrators and customers at Google Cloud Platform’s Next event last week in San Francisco,” Barnicle said. “We heard that demand for Google’s cloud has increased since Diane Greene took the helm in November, but we did not hear that it is coming at Azure’s expense. “We repeatedly heard that Microsoft’s momentum remains robust among enterprises moving Microsoft workloads to the cloud.” RELATED: Microsoft Stock Gets Thumbs Up From Oppenheimer . Scalper1 News
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