By Brian Sozzi
Publication Date: 2026-04-06 19:38:00
Some of the headwinds that have plowed through Microsoft’s (MSFT) stock are unlikely to abate in the near term.
Goldman Sachs analyst Gabriela Borges pinned the company’s 23% plunge this year to two factors in a new note on Monday.
First, upward revisions to capital expenditures without commensurate upward revisions to Azure cloud sales. This resurfaced concerns about returns on investment and Azure’s competitive positioning against peers such as Amazon’s (AMZN) AWS.
Second, ongoing concerns that Microsoft’s business worker applications, such as Office 365, may be disrupted by AI competition like Anthropic’s (ANTH.PVT) Claude Cowork. This is fueled by the perception that Copilot functionality lags the performance of other AI tools.
“We think risk/reward is balanced into the [earnings release] print: the near-term fundamental outlook is mixed but investor expectations are also lower,” Borges added.
Microsoft is slated to report earnings on April 29 after the…
