By Michael Douglass
Publication Date: 2026-10-06 18:03:00
Key Takeaways
- Microsoft shares gained 37.5% in the third quarter, and Jim Cramer says the company is “beginning to recoup its monster data center investment.”
- The payoff is showing up in Microsoft’s revenue, but its free cash flow has slipped for two years running, so the recoup is only just beginning.
- Microsoft’s capital spending rose from $23.9 billion in fiscal 2022 to $116 billion in fiscal 2026, and 30 million Copilot users can’t cover that bill on their own.
- The thing to watch is whether spending peaks while revenue keeps climbing toward the $467 billion analysts expect for fiscal 2028.
On Wednesday night’s episode of Mad Money, CNBC’s Jim Cramer ran through everything investors were worried about back in June at the beginning of what has been an incredible run for Microsoft (MSFT).
Azure slowing down. Too much tangled up with OpenAI. Customers who supposedly wouldn’t pay for Copilot.
“All of these worries turned out to be either…