We recently published a list of Jim Cramer on These 9 Stocks Recently. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) stands against other stocks that Jim Cramer discussed recently.
On Wednesday, Jim Cramer, the host of Mad Money, shared his thoughts on the importance of recognizing the scale of opportunity when evaluating a company.
“Sometimes I wonder that I’m doing a big disservice to you as a viewer when I talk about earnings per share or upside surprises or possible buybacks, dividends. I wonder if I’m failing you for focusing on what feels like the minutiae right now.”
According to Cramer, there are instances when the opportunity at hand is so vast that the smaller elements seem insignificant, and nowhere was this more apparent than at NVIDIA’s annual GTC event. While he usually focuses on the larger game, one in which every player stands to win, Cramer said that he would rather talk about the finer points of individual stocks.
At the event, Cramer emphasized that the conference was less about today’s trends and more about what lies ahead, especially in terms of how companies could transform industries by embracing GPU kingpin’s cutting-edge technology. He pointed out that the real shift happens when companies, not consumers, adopt this technology.
“Notice I said if other companies embrace it, not you, not the consumer and that’s hard to bring light. We’ve gotten used to consumer-oriented tech conferences for years.”
The company’s work, he argued, is not aimed at the everyday consumer but at businesses and enterprises, which adds a layer of complexity in communicating its value. Cramer noted that while the focus on the enterprise might seem challenging, it is also a double-edged sword. On one hand, it is a tougher sell to individual investors, many of whom hold stocks but do not fully understand the significance of enterprise-oriented stocks. The lack of understanding, Cramer suggested, often drives investors to sell off shares in companies when their performance dips, as has happened recently. He added:
“The good news, the enterprise is much bigger than the consumer so it’ll produce much bigger earnings per share. Catering to the corporation is typically a much better business model than catering to the individual.”
For this article, we compiled a list of 9 stocks that were discussed by Jim Cramer during the episode of Mad Money aired on March 19. We listed the stocks in the order that Cramer mentioned them. We also provided hedge fund sentiment for each stock as of the fourth quarter of 2024, which was taken from Insider Monkey’s database of over 1,000 hedge funds.
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 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
Microsoft Corporation (MSFT): AI, Azure, and the Challenge of Monetizing Innovation
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Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 317
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) was mentioned during the episode, and here’s what Mad Money’s host had to say:
“We might do the same with Gemini from Google, reels from Meta, Copilot from Microsoft. Those are all consumer-oriented. Everybody understands the consumer because we’re consumers. Tech conferences have been like that ever since the first iPhone was rolled out into 2007 and that’s when you, the consumer, became the pre-eminent person when it came to tech.
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) creates software, services, devices, and solutions across various sectors, including productivity tools, cloud services, enterprise applications, gaming, and products for both consumers and businesses. Columbia Seligman Global Technology Fund stated the following regarding the company in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“Within software, the fund maintained an underweight position to Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), which proved beneficial as share price for the company fell during the fourth quarter. Microsoft’s outlook for its Azure business came down slightly, which hampered the stock price at times during the quarter and, combined with losses on the Open AI business, led to a disappointing end to 2024. The company has guided its capital expenditure spending up slightly and investors continue to wait for additional monetization from the company’s large commitment to AI infrastructure spending. The fund continued to hold an overweight allocation to Oracle as we believe Oracle is positioned to be a major beneficiary of the AI rollout and has the potential to compete with other large cloud providers, such as Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft. Oracle shares moved lower during the quarter and the stock suffered its worst day of the year in December, as the company narrowly underperformed analysts’ average estimates. Oracle’s business model remains strong as demand for computer power that can handle AI is increasing and the company’s revenues from its cloud infrastructure unit moved higher year over year.”
Overall, MSFT ranks 9th on our list of Jim Cramer discussed recently. While we acknowledge the potential of MSFT as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. 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.
