Financial
When Microsoft went public and launched its initial public offering (IPO) in 1986, the opening stock price was $21; after the trading day, the price closed at $27.75. As of July 2010, with the company's nine stock splits, any IPO shares would be multiplied by 288; if one was to buy the IPO today given the splits and other factors, it would cost about 9 cents.[16]:235–236[103][104] The stock price peaked in 1999 at around $119 ($60.928 adjusting for splits).[105] The company began to offer a dividend on January 16, 2003, starting at eight cents per share for the fiscal year followed by a dividend of sixteen cents per share the subsequent year, switching from yearly to quarterly dividends in 2005 with eight cents a share per quarter and a special one-time payout of three dollars per share for the second quarter of the fiscal year.[105][106]Though the company had subsequent increases in dividend payouts, the price of Microsoft's stock remained steady for years.[106][107]
Standard and Poor's and Moody's have both given a AAA rating to Microsoft, whose assets were valued at $41 billion as compared to only $8.5 billion in unsecured debt. Consequently, in February 2011 Microsoft released a corporate bond amounting to $2.25 billion with relatively low borrowing rates compared to government bonds.[108] For the first time in 20 years Apple Inc. surpassed Microsoft in Q1 2011 quarterly profits and revenues due to a slowdown in PC sales and continuing huge losses in Microsoft's Online Services Division (which contains its search engine Bing). Microsoft profits were $5.2 billion, while Apple Inc. profits were $6 billion, on revenues of $14.5 billion and $24.7 billion respectively.[109]Microsoft's Online Services Division has been continuously loss-making since 2006 and in Q1 2011 it lost $726 million. This follows a loss of $2.5 billion for the year 2010.[110]
On July 20, 2012, Microsoft posted its first quarterly loss ever, despite earning record revenues for the quarter and fiscal year, with a net loss of $492 million due to a writedown related to the advertising company aQuantive, which had been acquired for $6.2 billion back in 2007.[111] As of January 2014, Microsoft's market capitalization stood at $314B,[112] making it the 8th largest company in the world by market capitalization.[113] On November 14, 2014, Microsoft overtook Exxon Mobil to become the 2nd most valuable company by market capitalization, behind only Apple Inc. Its total market value was over $410B — with the stock price hitting $50.04 a share, the highest since early 2000.[114] In 2015, Reuters reported that Microsoft Corp had earnings abroad of $76.4 billion which were untaxed by the IRS. Under U.S. law corporations don't pay income tax on overseas profits until the profits are brought into the United States.[115]
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