MSFT Stock Bounces, Ballmer Calls Out Microsoft Corporation Reports

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is taking decent steps to throw off its reputation as an archaic firm that represents an era long gone. The firm has been re-branding itself since Satya Nadella took over as CEO and it seems to be doing a great job. Microsoft has a new mission statement focused on a “Mobile First, Cloud First” approach. The firm is making coming up as a serious player in the tech space as it unveils pleasant surprises across its range of software and hardware products.
Nonetheless, the firm’s former CEO Steve Ballmer doesn’t think that Microsoft deserves the cheers. Steve Ballmer has taken up an issue with how Microsoft reports its financials and he thinks that some of the recent decisions at the firm might backfire in the end. Steve Ballmer aired his displeasure with Microsoft on Wednesday during an interview with Bloomberg.

Ballmer takes aim at Microsoft

Ballmer, apart from being the past CEO of Microsoft is an ardent supporter of the firm. Hence, any criticism that he has is very hard to ignore. He is opposed to the firm’s decision to share a run rate for its cloud business instead of posting the actual revenue from the segment. Microsoft’s Azure cloud business is drumming up support in the market and it is close to catching up with Amazon’s AWS cloud business.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has high hopes for its cloud business but the firm is somewhat dodgy about the past performances of the sector. Revenue shows how much money a segment has brought in over a period, but run rate takes the income from a point and make forecasts based on that focal point. Microsoft has said that Azure will deliver $8.2B in annual revenue and that its revenue will reach $20B by 2018.

To date, Ballmer remains the largest individual shareholder at Microsoft. He has shares totaling 333 million shares, which is more than Bill Gates’ total share count of 223 million shares. He joined Bill Gates at the firm in 1980 to become employer number 30. He became the CEO of the firm in 2006 and has some achievements to his credit. He tripled the firm’s revenue to almost $78B and the profits of the firm jumped to $22B in his last year as the CEO.

Ballmer might be wrong on this

Ballmer also took issue with the elements of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)‘s “mobile first” approach. Nadella has outlined the “Universal Apps” that it is pushing developers to create as a vibrant tool for attracting apps to the Windows 10 platform. However, Ballmer thinks that Universal apps won’t work and that the firm was better off running Android apps.

At time of writing shares in Microsoft Corporation were selling for $55.31, up 2.05 percent for the day so far. That puts the firm close to its opening price on Thursday’s market, and the effect of Ballmer’s comments appears to have been small, if at all significant.