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While the current drawdown has been painful for many large-cap technology companies, I believe Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:NASDAQ:MSFT) is the best of the bunch and is set to outperform peers. Microsoft has the most leverage to mission critical business functions (office productivity software, cloud computing) that is relatively more immune to economic headwinds. Furthermore, Microsoft's valuation has already normalized to pre-COVID levels, which offers an attractive entry point.

Large Cap Tech Stocks Have Sold Off, Now What?

As many investors know, 2022 has been characterized by almost indiscriminate selling of high growth technology stocks, with some former high flyers such as Meta Platforms, Inc. (META) falling by almost 60% YTD (Figure 1). Even the largest technology company in the world, Apple Inc. (AAPL), has begun to falter in recent days due to concerns of slowing demand for its new handsets, which I wrote about in a recent article.

Is this a replay of the early 2000s tech bust, and investors should run for the hills and avoid all tech investments for years? While there are signs of speculative excess in the past few years (the meme stock and SPAC phenomena, for example), I don't think we will see a lost decade like in the early 2000s, particularly for solidly profitable companies like Microsoft.

Cleanest Dirty Shirt

Each of the large technology megacaps are facing unique challenges and issues. For example, Alphabet Inc. (GOOG, GOOGL) and Meta are facing threats in their core advertising businesses from Apple and Amazon.com, Inc (AMZN), as well as headwinds from a worsening economy. Apple is seeing slowing demand for its handsets, which drives the majority of corporate profits. Amazon's retail business is also threatened by a consumer slowdown due to the worsening economic outlook. The one company out of the five technology mega caps ("MAGMA") that seem best positioned to outperform is Microsoft.

SaaS Subscriptions Extremely Sticky

Analyzing Microsoft's operations through its main business segments, we can draw several observations. First, the Productivity and Business Processes segment, which encompasses the Office productivity franchise, continues to see strong revenue growth. In the LTM to June 30, Productivity and Business Processes saw 17.6% YoY growth. Operating Income grew even faster at 21.7% YoY, to a 46.8% operating margin (Figure 2).

Essentially, Microsoft has a stranglehold on office productivity software. In years past, companies could choose to delay upgrading to the latest version of Office. As long as users didn't care about the latest bells and whistles, core business functionalities like spreadsheets and word processing were not affected by using an older version of the software. In fact, I have personally only used four versions of Office over two decades (2000, 2007, 2013, and Office 365), as the IT departments of the companies I worked at did not think the other versions offered significant benefits compared to their cost.

However, as customers have been migrated to the SaaS subscription-based Office 365 (and the equivalent consumer offerings), the delayed upgrade cycle is no longer possible. If companies don't pay the subscription fee, they lose access to all of their mission critical software and data.

Furthermore, the SaaS subscription model gives Microsoft the ability to raise pricing on a yearly basis, with companies essentially locked in.

Cloud Benefiting From A Growing Pie

Increasingly, businesses find it cheaper and more convenient to obtain computing power from the "cloud" rather than build their own server farms. Amazon's AWS, Microsoft's Azure, and Google's Cloud Platform ("GCP") together account for more than 60% of the cloud computing market (Figure 3).

Although some analysts have highlighted increased competitive pressures in the cloud computing market, so far it has not led to margin pressure. AWS reported operating margins of 29% in the latest quarter, and Microsoft's Cloud segment appears to be even more profitable, with 43.4% operating margins in the LTM to June 30 (from Figure 2 above).

Although economic weakness could curtail some cyclical growth in the cloud business, I believe the secular tailwind from increasing cloud adoption should still provide plenty of growth and profit opportunities for Microsoft Azure for years to come (Figure 4).

Personal Computing Weakest Link

The weakest business segment in Microsoft's portfolio is the "More Personal Computing" segment, which encompasses OEM installation of Windows, Bing search revenues, and Xbox revenues. These are more cyclical businesses that could face headwinds in a tough economic environment. So far, from Figure 1 above, we can see that revenue growth has slowed to just 2.1% YoY in the latest quarter, and operating profits actually dipped to 31.9% operating margin vs. 34.7%.

However, investors need to put these figures into context. A business that generates $14 billion in quarterly revenues at a 32% operating margin is still fantastic!

Valuation At A Justified Premium...

Microsoft currently trades at a 23.3x FWD P/E, above the sector median 16.7x. Compared to the rest of MAGMA, MSFT also does not screen cheap, having the 2nd highest FWD P/E multiple.

However, valuation multiples should be viewed in the context of profitability and risk. Out of the MAGMA peers, Microsoft has the highest net margin at 36.7% (Figure 6).

Also, when we think about the core business of each of the MAGMA peers, we find that they are all at significant risk from a weakening economy. AAPL's business is consumer-facing, and the consumer is hurting right now from high inflation. AMZN derives the vast majority of its revenues from its online retail operations, which is also consumer facing. GOOGL and META both generate the majority of their revenues from advertising, which could see headwinds as companies cut back on ad-spending.

Microsoft, in contrast, has 70% of revenues tied to mission critical functions (Office 365, Cloud compute) that companies are unlikely to cut back on, unless absolutely necessary.

...And Normalized To Pre-COVID Levels

Furthermore, when viewed through a historical lens, Microsoft's current valuation appears to have normalized, with both FWD P/E and EV/EBITDA returning to pre-COVID levels.

Although Microsoft's valuation can still fall further, at least Microsoft is not trading at a significantly higher valuation than pre-COVID like AAPL, for example, which is currently trading at 23x FWD P/E vs. 15x FWD P/E pre-COVID.

Technicals Set Up To Outperform

From a technical perspective, we can see that Microsoft has been in a multi-year sideways consolidation pattern, relative to the technology sector, as represented by the Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLK). I think this chart pattern will break out to the upside, as Microsoft's sticky productivity and cloud businesses will allow it to outperform technology peers in the next few quarters as the global economy weakens (Figure 8).

Conclusion

In summary, While the current drawdown has been painful for many technology companies, I believe Microsoft is the best of the bunch and is set to outperform peers. Microsoft has the most leverage to mission critical business functions (office productivity software, cloud computing) that is relatively immune to economic headwinds. Furthermore, Microsoft's valuation has already normalized to pre-COVID levels, offering an attractive entry point.

RBSE has released the Class 9, 10,11 and 12 board exam syllabus.

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RBSE Class 10,12 exam 2023: The Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education (RBSE) has released the Class 9, 10,11 and 12 board exam syllabus. Candidates can check and obtain the RBSE 2023 board examination syllabus through the official website – rajeduboard.rajasthan.gov.in.

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There’s no returning to the way we used to work in 2019. The world has changed, and leadership needs to keep up. Our latest Work Trend Index research reveals that getting hybrid work right will require not just new leadership skills, but a whole new mindset.

This moment–and the hybrid era ahead–call for leading like a scientist: being curious, gathering the right information, and testing and challenging our own hypotheses to reach the best answers.

At Microsoft, we believe in leading with data, not dogma. That means leading with the right data–numbers that measure outcomes, not just activity. Leaders have a choice: either embrace this mindset to fuel success for both employees and organizations or face economic and cultural headwinds along with outdated metrics and false assumptions.

Today, many leaders are sentries, not scientists

In our survey, 85% of leaders said that the shift to hybrid work has made it challenging to have confidence that people are productive. They may have reason to worry: In the U.S. we’ve seen signs that economic productivity has recently declined. Yet most employees (87%) report that they are productive at work–and Microsoft telemetry confirms that meeting overload, multitasking, and long workdays are the norm, not the exception.

We call this productivity paranoia: Leaders are thinking their people aren’t working enough, while many employees are working more than ever.

Some leaders miss the visibility that the office used to provide, and some companies have even turned to monitoring keystrokes, mouse movements, and onscreen activity to alleviate this paranoia. But while you might get a lot of data from tracking this type of employee activity, I can confidently say it’s the wrong data.

At Microsoft, we believe that using technology to spy on people at work is not the answer and our technology is not designed for that purpose. Measuring productivity with mouse movements is like using a sundial as a stopwatch. And surveillance doesn’t just lead to bad data–it undermines trust, a critical factor in organizational success that, once lost, is incredibly difficult to regain.

However, if leaders can move away from surveillance and embrace a more scientific mindset, data insights viewed in aggregate can be used to help people and teams do their best work, all while balancing productivity and well-being. Our research reveals three key ways leaders can act more like scientists to drive business impact: focus on outcomes, measure what matters, and listen to understand.

Focus on outcomes, not output

Leaders urgently need to pivot from worrying about whether their people are working enough to helping them focus on the work that’s most important. That means prioritizing value over volume and outcomes over activity. "Busywork" is bad for the bottom line, and leaders are overdue in acknowledging this to themselves and to their employees.

Some 81% of employees say it’s important to have managers help them prioritize their workload, but less than a third (31%) say their managers never deliver clear guidance on how to do that during one-on-ones. And managers need all the help they can get: 84% told us more guidance on prioritizing their own work would help their performance, and 80% say they’d personally benefit from more clarity from senior leadership on impactful priorities.

Leaders not only need to set tangible goals like OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), but they should also establish NO-KRs–those tasks that employees will not do in order to get the most critical work done. They need to align teams around impact and alleviate "busywork" that doesn’t support key goals.

Measure what matters

Looking around the office was never an accurate or efficient way to assess impact, alignment, and well-being. Neither is its digital equivalent, workplace surveillance.

Instead of measuring activity, measure outcomes–the results that are directly tied to business success. You should also look for ways to gather intelligent insights on engagement, digital exhaustion, and well-being through an employee experience platform.

This helps you measure team progress toward goals (not how many emails it took to get there) and can warn managers when team wellbeing may be at risk, putting productivity and ultimately business success at risk as well.

It also helps foster a healthier work culture where managers, teams, and employees can do their best. For example, flagging managers when a team is experiencing meeting overload, or reminding an individual they haven’t booked focus time for the week.

Listen to understand

The data shows that only 43% of employees strongly agree that their company solicits employee feedback at least once a year–meaning over half of the companies rarely–if ever–ask employees about their experience at work.

Employees are often closest to the business processes and pain points that can hurt or help productivity. If leaders aren’t asking for their insight, they’re missing valuable information, as well as an opportunity to foster employee engagement.

Our research shows that employees who feel their companies use their feedback to drive change are significantly more satisfied (90% vs. 69%) and engaged (89% vs. 73%) compared to those who believe their companies don’t take action.

In our hybrid world, leaders need to be intentional about regularly asking for and truly listening to employee feedback to keep a pulse on how their people are doing. Consider co-creating new metrics or experimental approaches with them to encourage buy-in and transparency.

Looking ahead

In uncertain economic times, leaders feel more pressure than ever to deliver success and get the best from their employees. But if you think simply monitoring and measuring activity will get you there, you’re simply wrong.

The leaders who help their organizations pull ahead will be the ones who think, act, and manage like scientists—gathering data from multiple sources, experimenting to test hypotheses before acting on them and being open to unexpected outcomes. The ones who don’t will fall behind.

Jared Spataro is Microsoft’s corporate vice president of modern work.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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For Marc Powell, a seemingly simple trip to the store to buy medication or other consumer health products is often an onerous, complicated undertaking.

Powell, who is blind, usually must ask a store employee to help find what he needs and then read the information on the packaging to him, which can feel intrusive. At home he’ll ask his partner, who has partial sight, for help, but the print is sometimes too small for her to read. In a pinch, he’ll scour the internet or wait until a family member stops by and can read aloud to him the information he needs.

“I’m incredibly reliant on somebody else to let me know about the product — what I’m meant to do with it, how many tablets I can take or what it contains,” says Powell, the accessibility innovation lead for the U.K.-based Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), who lives in Cambridge, England. “It’s crazy to say that, isn’t it?”

A new collaboration between Microsoft and global consumer health company Haleon aims to make health product information more accessible for people who are blind or have partial vision, or individuals with low literacy. The companies worked together to expand the functionality of Microsoft’s Seeing AI app to provide detailed audio information for more than 1,500 Haleon products in the U.S. and the U.K., including brands such as Centrum, Sensodyne and Emergen-C. The initiative was launched in recognition of World Sight Day Oct. 13.

Using Seeing AI, users can now scan the bar code on Haleon products and hear the same information that is provided on the packaging, such as the product name, usage instructions and ingredients. When users point a phone at a Haleon product, the Seeing AI app guides them to the bar code with a series of intensifying beeps. After scanning the code, users can navigate between sections to get the specific information they want, a feature that has been well-received by partially sighted people who tried out the functionality before its launch.

“We have had great feedback from people who are blind and have low vision,” says Tamara Rogers, global chief marketing officer at Haleon. “They really value the increased independence that comes from being empowered to access our product information themselves.”

The new functionality was developed not just for people who are blind or have low vision, but also for those who have literacy challenges, Rogers says. “There’s a classic health industry saying which is, ‘Always read the label, always read the instructions,’ and for some, that just isn’t possible,” she says.

“This initiative will make Haleon products more accessible to people who are blind or have low vision. It will also provide more independence to people with low literacy levels. This is a great way of being able to communicate in a different way, audibly, rather than asking people to read.”

Launched in 2017, Microsoft’s Seeing AI application is an AI camera-based app that can read text such as documents or signs, describe scenes, recognize currency and even identify friends. Available in 19 languages, the app has become a multipurpose tool that is helping people who are blind or have low vision navigate their daily lives. The newly enhanced functionality helps consumers in the U.S. and U.K. read packaging details in English. Previously, there wasn’t an easy way for Seeing AI to read detailed information on packaging without a user moving a camera around the text.

The collaboration with Haleon “is really important and exciting, because Seeing AI has always been able to recognize products, but the challenge has been having access to data that is really rich, and that comes from the manufacturer,” says Saqib Shaikh, an engineering manager at Microsoft who led the team that developed Seeing AI.

“Now you can just scan the barcode and hear exactly what was written on the package. It’s directly what the manufacturer wanted you to hear. The information is really accurate, and you’re getting it all in one place. You’re not having to scan all the different sides of the package to find the bits you want. It’s all right there once you’ve scanned the barcode.

“Now you can deliver more information, and trustworthy information,” Shaikh says. “Haleon is leading the way in doing this.”

Shaikh hopes more companies will follow Haleon’s lead and use technology to provide audio information for people who are blind or who have low vision, or those with literacy challenges. Doing so could provide important information not just for health products, he says, but for food items and countless other things people use in their daily lives.

“I’d love to make every product out there accessible so you can just scan it, whether by bar code or some other future technology, and know what it is,” he says. “This data is out there. It’s just that all the data’s in siloes. What we were able to do here was, by the companies having the will, to break down these siloes.”

More than 3 million people in the United States and more than 2 million in the U.K. are living with sight loss, and millions more struggle with poor literacy. A study commissioned by Haleon found that 93 percent of respondents didn’t think health products were accessible enough, and almost one in five said they had taken an incorrect dosage of a product because they couldn’t read the packaging.

Haleon saw technology as a tool to address those issues, Rogers says, but wanted to build on an existing platform rather than creating new technology that people who are blind or have low vision would need to adopt. Haleon approached Microsoft about using the Seeing AI app to create audio guides for its products, and the two companies worked closely together to build out the new functionality for Haleon’s bar codes. Microsoft developed an end-to-end pipeline that allows Haleon to control the data for its consumer products, which is stored in Azure, and update information or add new items as needed.

Powell says to his knowledge, Haleon — a spinoff of GlaxoSmithKline created in July 2022 to focus on consumer health products — is the first consumer health company to provide accessible information through Seeing AI for its products.

“I think this will be really useful,” he says. “This allows us as blind people to have the same level of knowledge and understanding as someone who can read the packaging. So this is a really good step.”

Microsoft expands Microsoft Viva platform to connect employees to company culture, business goals and one another

REDMOND, Wash. — Sept. 22, 2022 — On Thursday, Microsoft Corp. released a Work Trend Index Pulse report, “Hybrid Work Is Just Work. Are We Doing It Wrong?” The company also announced new capabilities in Microsoft Viva, its employee experience platform, designed to help empower and energize employees in a time of economic uncertainty.

The data makes clear that hybrid work has created a growing disconnect between employees and leaders. They’re at odds about what constitutes productivity, how to maintain autonomy while ensuring accountability, the benefits of flexibility and the role of the office. To bridge this gap, a new approach is needed that recognizes work is no longer just a place but an experience that needs to transcend time and space so employees can stay engaged and connected no matter where they are working.

“Thriving employees are what will deliver organizations a competitive advantage in today’s dynamic economic environment,” said Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO, Microsoft. “Today, we’re announcing new innovations across our employee experience platform Microsoft Viva to help leaders end productivity paranoia, rebuild social capital, and re-recruit and re-energize their employees.”

To help leaders navigate the new realities of work, the Work Trend Index Pulse report[1] points to three urgent pivots every leader should make:

1. End productivity paranoia: 87% of employees report they are productive at work, but 85% of leaders say the shift to hybrid work has made it challenging to have confidence their employees are being productive. Leaders need to create clarity and alignment around company goals, eliminate busywork that doesn’t support those goals and listen to their people — 57% of companies are rarely, if ever, collecting employee feedback.
2. Embrace that people come in for each other: 73% of employees say they need a better reason to go into the office besides company expectations — but they would be motivated to go in if they could socialize with co-workers (84%) or rebuild team bonds (85%). Digital communication will be crucial to keep people connected inside and out the office — both employees and leaders rank communication as the No. 1 most critical skill needed to be successful in their roles this year.
3. Re-skill to re-recruit your employees: 55% of employees say the best way to develop their skills is to change companies. However, they also say they would stay longer at their company if it was easier to change jobs internally (68%) or if they could benefit more from learning and development support (76%).

To address these challenges, Microsoft is expanding its employee experience platform Microsoft Viva to help companies deliver an employee experience optimized for the way people now work. Today, Microsoft is announcing several new and enhanced capabilities coming to Viva:

• Viva Pulse is a new app that will enable managers and team leads to seek regular and confidential feedback on their team’s experience. Viva Pulse uses smart templates and research-backed questions to help managers pinpoint what’s working well and where to focus, and also provides suggested learning and actions to address team needs.
• Viva Amplify is a new app that will empower leaders and communicators to elevate their message and reach employees where they are with consistency and impact. The app centralizes communications campaigns, offers writing guidance to Excellerate message resonance, enables publishing across multiple channels and distribution groups in Microsoft 365, and provides metrics for improvement.
• Answers in Viva is a new capability that will use AI to match employee questions to answers and experts across the organization to help put collective knowledge to work for all employees.
• People in Viva is a new capability that will use AI to create rich profile cards with details on an employee’s interests, knowledge and team goals to help colleagues easily discover connections, experts and insights across the organization. These insights will be available through Microsoft 365 profile cards and as a new app.
• Microsoft recently launched Viva Engage, which fosters digital community building through conversations and self-expression tools with stories and storylines. Leadership Corner is coming to Viva Engage as a space to invite employees to interact directly with leadership, share ideas and perspectives, participate in organization initiatives, and more.
• Viva Goals helps organizations align employee work to business outcomes. New integrations in Viva Goals will bring goals into the flow of work including a richer integration with Microsoft Teams to check in on OKRs, an extension in Azure DevOps to complete work items, a connection to Power BI datasets to track KPIs and Key Results, and integrations with Microsoft Planner and Microsoft Project for automatic project management updates.
• Enhanced integrations between Viva Learning and LinkedIn Learning will make it even easier for people to access content from LinkedIn Learning Hub right in the flow of work in Teams. Learners will see all their LinkedIn Learning Hub content synced, including custom content, curated learning paths and the courses they have already completed, all reflected directly within Viva. And administrators will be able to set the integration up directly within their settings on LinkedIn Learning Hub — no APIs needed.
• Viva Sales, the first role-based experience app in the platform, will be generally available Oct. 3. Viva Sales brings together a seller’s CRM with Microsoft 365 and Teams to provide a more streamlined and AI-powered selling experience — right in the tools they’re using every day to connect with customers and close deals. Microsoft is announcing a partnership with Seismic to personalize and scale customer engagements through AI-generated content recommendations.
• To streamline access to Viva and help employees start their day on track, a new home experience in Viva Connections will bring all the Viva apps together in one place, and updates to the Viva briefing email will provide more personalized productivity recommendations to help employees catch up on work, meetings and learning.

The new Viva capabilities will begin rolling out to customers in early 2023.

To learn more, visit the Official Microsoft Blog, Microsoft 365 Blog and the new Work Trend Index Pulse report.

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

[1] The Work Trend Index Pulse report is based on an external study of 20,000 people in 11 countries, along with analysis of trillions of Microsoft 365 productivity signals, LinkedIn labor trends and Glint People Science insights.

For more information, press only:

Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications, (425) 638-7777, [email protected]

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://news.microsoft.com. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at https://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-public-relations-contacts.

Microsoft Research is releasing the underlying code for a series of agricultural technologies under open-source licenses, encouraging soil specialists, plant scientists and other experts to build tech solutions for sustainable farms.

The move comes as U.S. farmers grapple with low yields due in part to the effects of climate change and extreme weather in many parts of the country.

Microsoft is making the “FarmVibes.AI” technologies available on GitHub:

• Async Fusion uses drone and satellite images in combination with ground-based sensors to provide soil insights, helping farmers determine the depth to plant seeds and how much fertilizer to apply, for example.
• SpaceEye removes clouds from satellite images to analyze conditions in fields.
• DeepMC uses sensor data and weather station forecasts to predict temperatures and wind speeds.
• A “what if” tool designed to help farmers understand how different agricultural practices will impact soil-based carbon sequestration, giving them the possibility of earning additional income from carbon markets.

“We want to drive the innovations in the space around data and AI … by bringing the latest in tech to the domain experts,” said Ranveer Chandra, managing director of Microsoft’s Research for Industry Group, in a media briefing. “Through them, we will then be able to really make advances in democratizing data-driven agriculture.”

Microsoft has been testing the technologies with Andrew Nelson, an Eastern Washington farmer and software engineer, who studied computer science and business at the University of Washington.

He’s also unusual in that he has been able to secure a fiber connection to his farm, after trying for about 15 years to get one. “To make sure that I can prove out every single thing that we do, I have a lot of connectivity on our farm,” Nelson said, acknowledging that he’s “very lucky.”

One of the technologies to be released by the Microsoft in the future will help to address the issue for others: FarmVibes.Connect uses unused spectrum, also known as TV “white spaces,” to provide internet connectivity in rural areas.