微軟轉型贏得市場認可

Zune (tee hee). Vista (snort). Bing (BWA HA HA). Windows phone (Stop it! I can’t breathe!).

Zune播放器（嘻嘻）。Vista操作系統（噗）。Bing必應搜索引擎（哇哈哈哈）。 Windows手機（別鬧了！氣都喘不過來了！）。

Laugh all you want. Most of us do. Microsoft’s investors are laughing harder. Over the past two years, the shares have returned 94 per cent, absolutely crushing the results of (where to start?) Google, Apple, SAP, Oracle, IBM and VMware. Its market value has risen by $180bn.

盡情笑吧。我們大多數人都在笑。微軟(Microsoft)的投資者笑得更開懷。過去兩年，微軟股價上漲94%，輕鬆擊敗（從哪兒說起呢？）谷歌(Google)、蘋果(Apple)、SAP、甲骨文(Oracle)、IBM和VMware的股票表現。其市值增加了1800億美元。

What has happened? In the September quarter call with analysts two years ago, the word “PC” was used 23 times; in the most recent call, 11 times. The word “cloud”, on the other hand, went from 11 instances to 57. This sums it up. The company has gone — at least in the mind of the market — from being tied to a technology in permanent decline to being a company successfully delivering its product over the internet. It makes some sense, then, that the price surge is backed less by an increase in expected earnings than by a butterfly-like change in the valuation. The stock traded at nine times earnings two years ago. Now it goes for 17. The market anticipates sustained growth.

發生了什麼？兩年前9月份這個季度的業績發佈後，在面向分析師舉行的電話會議中，“PC”這個詞的使用頻率是23次；但最近一個季度的電話會議中，使用頻率是11次。另一方面，“雲”這個詞的頻率從11次增加到57次。這就說明了問題。該公司（至少在市場的腦海中）不再與一種處於永久衰落的技術掛鉤，而已經轉型爲一家通過互聯網成功交付產品的公司。因此，股價上漲有理由在較小程度上依賴於預期盈利增長，在較大程度上受到類似蝴蝶效應的估值變化的推動。兩年前，該股市盈率是9倍。現在接近17倍。市場預期持續增長。

There is more to it than that, of course. As Bernstein Research notes, it also helps that what looked like a permanent decline in PC sales levelled out, and a new reporting structure highlights how much of the company’s revenue comes from companies rather than consumers. Investors are also enthusiastic about new boss Satya Nadella, who appears serious about both cutting costs and returning more capital to shareholders.

當然不僅僅是上述理由。正如伯恩斯坦研究公司(Bernstein Research)指出，一度貌似永久性的PC銷售下跌已穩定下來——這也有所幫助，而且新的業報結構強調了微軟的營收有多少來自企業，而非消費者。投資者對新的掌門人薩帝亞·納德拉(Satya Nadella)也很熱情，他似乎很注重削減成本和向股東返還更多資本這兩方面。

Sustaining the rally depends on the balance between the growing bits of Microsoft (the business software unit and the “cloud” bit of the consumer business) and the shrinking bits (consumer licences for Windows and Office). It is hard to see how to predict that — except by simple extrapolation from current trends, which suggests the stock is fairly valued. Microsoft has already proved it can defy expectations, though.

維持漲勢取決於在微軟不斷增長的業務（商用軟件業務和消費者“雲”業務）和不斷萎縮的業務（Windows操作系統和Office軟件的消費者許可證書）兩者間達到適當平衡。很難看出對此該如何預測——除了對當前趨勢做簡單的外推，這種外推似乎顯示微軟的股價估值公允。不過，微軟已經證明自己能夠打破市場預期。