News and analysis

In addition to our small research two weeks ago, where we discussed possible arguments in favour of re-establishing appropriate price targets for shares of Microsoft above $500, similar estimates are now finding reputable support from analysts at Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and some other flagship investment institutions. Shares of the Windows developer, by the way, have climbed from $435 to almost $460 since then, achieving another double-digit growth.

As we mostly relied upon high and still growing demand for cloud technologies from Microsoft's Azure division as the major catalyst for further growth, Goldman Sachs analyst Kash Rangan also shared his confidence in Microsoft’s AI investments bolstered during the Microsoft Build conference in Seattle, where the tech giant reportedly focused on its $300 billion-plus forecast for its cloud segment revenue by the fiscal year of 2029. The ambitious figure followed the strong uptrend in Microsoft Azure's cloud revenue, which grew at a current pace above 14% YoY. Kash Rangan also admired Microsoft’s rising efficiency in terms of capital expenditure profile, including a 3% reduction in working force, as he called it "a positive development". Rangan especially mentioned a stronger momentum of GitHub Copilot with an AI coding agent from Google-backed startup Anthropic and more than 15 million developers clients already for managing their code bases, an introduction of Copilot agent and Copilot Studio for fine-tuning and orchestrating multiple AI agents, as well as the Foundry service for open agentic web development plus the "ongoing scaling of Azure", which now works in over 70 regions globally. As a result, he just announced an increase in the price target for Microsoft to $550 on Tuesday, May 20, which is a nearly 15% upside revision from Goldman Sachs' previous market value estimate of $480.

More than 20 other analysts of leading investment houses and banks on Wall Street improved Microsoft's earnings estimates upward in May, mostly citing the company’s AI initiatives, deepening platform integration and its commitment to an open agentic AI through the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to form even a more perfect developer tool ecosystem. As an example, Citigroup analysts have raised Microsoft’s price target to $540 from $480 this week, with a Buy rating again. These are all drivers of maintaining Microsoft’s cool leadership, so that the most valuable company in the world is shifting from GenAI infrastructure projects to its various platform application layers, which may mirror the earlier transition "from on-premises to cloud-based solutions", according to Rangan again. Meanwhile, the EU officials are close to accepting Microsoft’s recent proposal to adjust the pricing of its Office products to cut the Gordian knot of a lasting antitrust issue.

Dogecoin (DOGE) is rising by 9.0% to $0.2430 this week, riding the wave of Bitcoin’s (BTC) phenomenal 16.0% surge to a new all-time high at $111,865. This explosive move followed the U.S. Senate’s approval of the stablecoin GENIUS Act, which sets up a regulatory framework for stablecoins and is expected to channel significant capital into the crypto space.

Investor enthusiasm is building across the board, with DOGE benefiting from the broader rally. The momentum could propel the meme coin toward the $0.3000 mark, with the potential to extend gains toward $0.4000 if market conditions remain favorable.

Tezos (XTZ) is trading flat at $0.614 this week, underperforming the broader crypto market as Bitcoin (BTC) rises by 2.0% to $106,200. The token appears to be consolidating after breaking through key resistance at $0.600. It reached a recent high of $0.700 on May 13—the highest level since March 28—before pulling back to retest the new support zone.

This retest suggests a potential continuation of the upward trend. Momentum is supported not only by improving overall market sentiment but also by the recent Rio upgrade, which enhances staking flexibility, bolsters Layer 2 development, and strengthens the validator framework. With these developments in place, XTZ may continue its upward trajectory toward the next target at $0.800, representing a potential 30% gain from current levels.

The share price of the U.S. and multinational home improvement retailer Home Depot initially jumped $10, from under $380 to nearly $390, or 2.5%, in the first few minutes after the opening bell on May 20. The price later dropped to test the $380+ area again, but was bought back to climb by nearly 2% once again. This probably consolidated the overall positive contribution of the corporation's quarterly earnings released that day to a more than 15% rising tide since its April 9's low at $328.60, when the market just got rid of the scourge of global tariff war in its most acute form.

Home Depot's sales clearly beats the analyst pool's estimates. Its overall comparable sales slid by 0.3% in the last three months, but reportedly hurt by weaker results in February because of improper weather. All in all, the company posted net sales of $39.86 billion, that is 1.5% better vs average expectations of $39.25 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG. At the same time, adjusted EPS (equity per share) came out at $3.56 vs $3.60 expected and $3.63 in the same season of 2024, but all those numbers look much higher than the one-off drop in profit numbers to only $3.13 per share in the Christmas quarter.

Two points were seemingly most important for keeping the investment sentiment on a positive side. The first point is that The Home Depot promised to hold its consumer prices unchanged despite tariffs' threat, citing resilient demand from professional contractors to lead to maintaining its former annual forecast unchanged. The other one is that the company's CFO Richard McPhail ensured that in the next 12 months, no single country outside the U.S. will represent more than 10% of its purchases", after it has cut its previously high exposure to China substantially in recent years. A well-diversified supply chain strategy should help Home Depot to "generally maintain current pricing levels across its portfolio", he added.

The HD's oath to keep prices steady are especially vital in contrast to Walmart’s warning only several days before that the major U.S. discounter may have to implement higher prices tags due to tariffs, which immediately drew the ire of U.S. president Donald Trump, who claimed that Walmart should "eat" the import tariffs and not to pass on the costs to consumers. This public controversy hasn't actually stopped Walmart from continuing its upside rally, but Walmart appears to have much more fundamental reasons for growth, and so a similar story with Home Depot could hurt its stock's performance.

Now, even though Home Depot could hardly be called a stable growth stock and it may be subject to moderate volatility as before, the Home Depot's ultimate price targets above $425, just corresponding to its January's highs of 2025, still prove their right to be kept in mind for the rest of the year. This happens despite some consumer-facing companies have shared rather sad quarterly results, pulling down their YoY forecasts.