Unless Congress changes things, the maximum federal capital gains rate goes from 15 percent to 20 percent starting January 1 - nice chunk o' change for selling now.Īnd the clincher: Steve himself denies any ulterior motive:"Even though this is a personal financial matter, I want to be clear about this to avoid any confusion. By selling stock now, instead of waiting until January, SteveB stands to save $100 million in taxes. Pundits like to poke at Steve's record at the helm, but the numbers speak for themselves. And all of them are thanks to SteveB's 10-year reign as Chief Chair Thrower. Microsoft's never had a more profitable full house of products, across so many industries, all raking in the bucks. To think that Apple almost got the Kinect technology from PrimeSense, whose CEO says, according to Gizmodo, "Apple is a pain in the ass." But I digress. On the consumer side, Kinect looks to be the runaway Christmas hit - and it'll drag Xbox sales along with it. By all accounts Windows Phone 7 - at least this version - works very nicely with Exchange. Corporate admins snarl at the various iOS version conflicts with Exchange. BlackBerry's fading into oblivion (my phone admin friend breathes a sigh of relief that his BlackBerry Enterprise Server may disappear soon). Windows Phone 7 has drawn some strong reviews from the most Apple-pie-eyed reviewers in the industry. Even Internet Explorer 9 looks to be the least wimpy me-too version of IE in many a year. Office 2010 is doing well, if not spectacularly. Microsoft has its best desktop lineup ever. Microsoft's buying back its own stock, with authorization to spend up to $23.7 billion as of June, and it's swimming in cash reserves, at more than $43 billion (typical for Microsoft). Operating income, net income, and EPS hit record highs, up more than 50 percent from a year ago. Two weeks ago, Microsoft announced record revenue of $16.20 billion for the quarter ending Sept. Microsoft's financials have never been stronger. It's absolutely preposterous that Ballmer would be planning a bailout at this point. I read the rumors and muttered to myself, "ridiculous" (actually, I muttered something much less printable), but at the same time I was struck by a little twang of deja vu. That's not ominous, and hardly unprecedented: In August last year, Bill sold 8 million shares.Īll of this selling has triggered wide-eyed speculation that SteveB may be getting ready to jump ship. The last time Ballmer sold any shares of Microsoft was seven years ago, when he unloaded about $1 billion.Ĭoincidentally, this past week, Bill Gates sold 3 million shares of Microsoft stock. Last week Steve Ballmer sold 49 million shares of Microsoft stock, at about $1.3 billion, and has filed to sell 26 million more shares, for a total (at current market prices) of about $2 billion.
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