Analysts Think Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) is Still The Best AI Stock — Here’s Why

We recently published a list of top 10 AI stocks Wall Street analysts are upgrading. Microsoft ranks higher in the list and deserves a deeper look.

There has been much uproar about AI stock valuations and how investors are overpaying for mega-cap tech stocks that are promising something that still lies far into the future — productivity gains, real-life AI products and AGI. But the market doesn’t seem to care what the AI skeptics and naysayers believe. There seems to be no end in sight to the AI-led gains in stocks. And analysts are expecting more. Goldman Sachs's Scott Rubner recently said that he sees a "wall of money" heading towards the market. Rubner pointed towards the whopping $7.3 trillion sitting in money market funds and said he believes the floodgates are about to open and investors would funnel that money into stocks. According to Rubner's model, the third quarter of 2024 is when we should expect billions ($29 billion, to be precise) to be flushed into the market.

One doesn’t need to have a crystal ball to know where all of those billions would be headed. AI is the promising theme everyone is betting on and that everyone includes experts, billionaires, money managers and long-term value investors. Tom Lee, Fundstrat Global Advisors co-founder, recently said in a program on CNBC that investors have been "hesitant" for much of the year, but they should just "stick" with "what's working." AI, weight loss drugs and related themes is what's working these days, according to Lee.

Methodology

For this article we picked the top AI stocks Wall Street analysts recently upgraded or gave bullish comments about. With each stock we have mentioned the number of hedge fund investors. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).

Paolo Bona / Shutterstock.com

Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT)

Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 293

Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) is strongly positioned to benefit from the AI revolution sweeping across both software and hardware industries. The stock has a new growth catalyst in the form of AI PCs. Piper Sandler analysts Brent Bracelin, Hannah Rudoff and J.R. Herrera  recently said in a note that Copilot Plus PCs could "spark a long-anticipated PC upgrade cycle." They have a $465 price target with an Overweight rating on the stock.

During the fiscal third quarter, Microsoft Corp's (NASDAQ:MSFT) revenue jumped 17% year over year to $61.85 billion, while its adjusted EPS saw growth of 20%.  Microsoft Corp's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Intelligent Cloud revenue growth came in at 21% on a YoY basis.  Microsoft Corp's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Cloud market share also grew to 25%, and Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) is slowly but surely catching up to Amazon, which has about 31% market share. Analysts believe Microsoft Corp's (NASDAQ:MSFT) AI ecosystem around its products would strengthen its Cloud division thanks to Microsoft Corp's (NASDAQ:MSFT) integration of AI into its Cloud products. Microsoft Corp's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Intelligent Cloud segment's profit in the latest quarter totaled $12.51 billion, a whopping 32% growth on a YoY basis.

Microsoft Corp's (NASDAQ:MSFT) huge investments to revive its Search business are also working. Bing's market share has jumped to 3.64% as of April 2024, a 0.88 points gain on a YoY basis.

Wall Street expects Microsoft Corp's (NASDAQ:MSFT) earnings to grow 12.50% next year. Based on the growth catalysts mentioned above, the stock's forward P/E of 31 based on 2025 EPS makes it look attractive at the current levels. Average analyst estimate for Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) is $483, which presents a 14% upside potential from the current levels.

Baron Fifth Avenue Growth Fund stated the following regarding Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) in its first quarter 2024 investor letter:

“Our second largest purchase during the quarter was the software platform, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), which we continued to add to, after initiating a position in the fourth quarter of 2023. Microsoft continues to report strong quarterly results, with revenue growth of 16% year-over-year in constant currency thanks to better-than-expected demand in its intelligent cloud segment, which saw revenue growth of 19% year-over-year, driven by Azure growth of 28% with AI contributing 6pts to growth compared with 3pts in the prior quarter. While the adoption of GenAI remains in its early stages, Microsoft has disclosed positive initial data points with 53,000 Azure AI customers as of its December quarter up from 18,000 in the prior quarter, 1.3 million paid GitHub Copilot subscribers (up 30% sequentially) and more than 230,000 organizations who have used AI capabilities in the power platform (up 80% sequentially). Management also noted that large cloud optimizations that started a year or so ago have largely finished. Profitability also continues to be strong with 44% non-GAAP operating margins, which was 120bps better than expected.”

Overall, Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) ranks 1st in Insider Monkey’s list of Analysts are Upgrading These 10 AI Stocks. You can visit Analysts are Upgrading These 10 AI Stocks to see the other AI stocks that are on analysts' radar. While we acknowledge the potential of MSFT, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than MSFT but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: Michael Burry Is Selling These Stocks and Jim Cramer is Recommending These Stocks.

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.