Many Wall Street analysts agree that Microsoft has become a clear number two in the public or hyper-scale cloud infrastructure market with Azure, which is the company’s cloud computing platform offerings, and which continues growing at triple-digit levels. Some have flagged Azure as the biggest rival to Amazon’s AWS service.
Some analysts maintain that Microsoft is discounting Azure for large enterprises, so that Azure may be cheaper than AWS for larger users. The cloud was big in the 2021 earnings reports so far and will remain a growing part of the software giant’s earnings profile.
The $365 Goldman Sachs price target on the Buyated shares is well above the $329.18 consensus target. Microsoft stock traded at $270.80 a share on Tuesday.
Seagate
This disk drive giant is hitting on all cylinders and looks reasonable at current trading levels. Seagate Technology Holdings PLC (NASDAQ: STX) provides data storage technology and solutions in Singapore, the United States, the Netherlands and elsewhere.
The company offers hard disk and solid state drives, including serial advanced technology attachment, serial attached SCSI and non-volatile memory express products; solid state hybrid drives; and storage subsystems. Its products are used in enterprise servers and storage systems and edge compute and non-compute applications.
Seagate also provides an enterprise data solutions portfolio, comprising storage subsystems and mass capacity optimized private cloud storage solutions for enterprises, cloud service providers and scale-out storage servers and original equipment manufacturers. In addition, it offers external storage solutions under the Seagate Backup Plus and Expansion product lines, as well as under the LaCie and Maxtor brands in capacities up to 16 terabytes.
Shareholders receive a 3.48% dividend. The Seagate Technology price target at BofA Securities is $125. That compares with a $102.90 consensus target and a recent share price of $80.85.
To be clear, the selling may not be over, and it makes sense to scale buy these five top companies slowly. Buying partial positions now will get you in the game but leave you the ability to add more shares if the selling resumes, which it is likely it will. None of the current issues causing the selling is going away anytime soon, but by later this year it is very possible that they may have calmed down some. In the meantime, the solid dividends will pay you to wait.
Originally posted at 24/7 Wall St.
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