Ballmer's Departure:Risk and Opportunity

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is to resign upon his successor's appointment.He has headed the tech titan since 2000.*Ballmer and Microsoft have been laggards,said Matthew McCormick,portfolio manager at Bahl and Gaynor Investment Counsel.It opens up so many doors.You're gonna see some capital returned to shareholders,some new thought and leadership.We think there's gonna be more unlocking of value throughout the tech sector.*They need someone from the outside.They need to make a move.We have high expectations Microsoft is gonna do something big.The tech sector has the best opportunity for growth going forward.*Microsoft's shares have lost 43% of their value since Ballmer took over.Rick Sherlund of Nomura Securities said we don't believe there is a successor in waiting.It's a failure of management.*Dan Niles,chief investment officer at Alpha One Capital Partners,said I think you're gonna get a dividend increase and a buyback increase.It's definitely a short term play.It's more about multiple expansion.*CEO changes are tough when you're in a business like this.The only way Ballmer's gone is Bill Gates wants hime gone.Someone from inside would be a bad decision.I think there are good CEOs out there.They need to look outside the box.They need a fresh perspective,Dan Niles observed.*Ballmer's management system created internal divisions,said Kirk Eichenwald of Vanity Fair magazine.The company needs to be busted up.It has so many divisions that have nothing to do with each other.Focus each division on what it does well,and sell off those that don't do well.*Microsoft(MSFT)

Should You Invest in Microsoft

I think Microsoft will move the office and server business to the cloud,said Rick Sherlund,Managing Director and Director of Technology Research at Nomura Securities,to align internally and focus their business model around the cloud.Their primary competitor in the cloud is Amazon.
It's gonna be important that they deliver higher end software,not just infrastructure.A lot of enterprises run Microsoft,so hopefully you can draw above average margins.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer own a little less than 9% of the stock.The stock rallies on restructuring reports.On fundamentals,the stock is pretty uninteresting right now.A lot of it is gonna have to come from increasing shareholder value.
Microsoft owns 10% of privately held Israeli  navigation and traffic report app Waze Ltd,which Google will reportedly purchase for 1.1 billion dollars.Microsoft would receive 100 million for its stake in the app.
Neither Google nor Waze will comment on the prospective deal.
In Monday trading,Microsoft stock closed at 35.47,down 0.56%.
Microsoft(MSFT),Google(GOOG),Amazon(AMZN)

Ballmer's Search View

Steve Ballmer,CEO of Microsoft,expressed his vision of the search world at the recent SMX event in Santa Clara,California.Google got to search first,Mr.Ballmer admitted.There's a value to incumbency.The truth is,we do have an ambition to grow.I guarantee you,search is gonna be an ever-growing share of Microsoft's profits.
The dynamics of business model competition are fascinating,Mr.Ballmer believes.There are a whole set of innovations still to come around business models.We've got seven or eight big businesses,plus a lot of our customers.I'm generally working on things that are in an intersection.We've got great people actually driving the search team.They have really improved,and there's always a new frontier.
We have a great partnership with Twitter.Whether we need to own the company or not I think is less clear.I'm more of a consumer than an author when it comes to the real time type of service such as Twitter.Facebook wants to be an independent company.A great collaboration would be best both for the searcher and for us,Mr.Ballmer said,wearing a burgundy sweatshirt over his blue button down.
We've got a lot of great stuff in the user experience.We've got to consolidate and drive taking action.We want to make sure we take care of the breadth of our experience in different countries over the next couple of years.The biggest opportunity in search is really helping people get done what they're trying to get done.It shouldn't be that hard to call up data.I'd like data assembled for me.We're all gonna have to go further and further down that path,the Microsoft CEO observed.