New York, July 9, 2026, 08:01 (EDT)
- Microsoft stock traded down in premarket, after dropping 1.41% on Wednesday.
- The company scheduled its fiscal Q4 results for July 29. Azure, Copilot, and AI spending are expected to get attention again.
- Nasdaq futures ticked up, suggesting the early move was more about Microsoft than the broader index.
Microsoft shares were lower before the bell Thursday, as the focus shifted to the company’s earnings due in late July and how much it is spending on AI. The stock traded at $377.67 at 7:42 a.m. EDT, down 1.48%, after closing at $383.34 on Wednesday, Wall Street Journal data showed.
Microsoft set its fiscal Q4 earnings report for after the bell on July 29, with the call at 2:30 p.m. Pacific. That leaves traders under three weeks to figure out if worries about cloud and AI spending from the first half are already priced in or if there’s more to come.
Nasdaq’s regular session hadn’t opened as of the dateline. The exchange lists its regular hours as 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern, with premarket starting at 4 a.m. and running through 9:30. July 9 isn’t a market holiday for 2026; U.S. markets closed July 3 for Independence Day.
Tech giants were mostly shrugging off the market action. U.S. stock futures climbed early Thursday, with Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.63% and S&P 500 futures ahead 0.19% by 5:27 a.m. ET, after oil prices slipped following more U.S.-Iran tensions, according to Reuters. Microsoft was an exception, slipping early.
Microsoft is getting tugged in two directions. Its cloud business is still big and posts quick gains, but investors are losing patience with how much it costs to keep growing. In the fiscal third quarter, Microsoft Cloud revenue was up 29% to $54.5 billion. Azure and other cloud services gained 40%. Azure lets businesses rent computing power and software instead of buying and running servers.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in April the company’s AI business hit a $37 billion annual revenue run rate, up 123% from last year. He said Microsoft added another gigawatt of data-center capacity for the quarter. That shows the AI race is turning on hardware—chips, power, cooling, and buildings—not just software.
Wall Street still leans bullish, but there’s less comfort. Out of 47 analysts tracking Microsoft, MarketBeat tallied 40 buys, seven holds, and no sells, with an average 12-month price target at $560.98. BMO’s Keith Bachman reaffirmed his Outperform and $515 target. Wolfe’s Alex Zukin lowered his target to $525 from $570 but stuck with an Outperform. MarketBeat
Cost control looks set in, with Microsoft announcing plans on Monday to cut 4,800 jobs, or 2.1% of its global staff, Reuters said. The cuts include about 3,200 Xbox positions. Parth Talsania, Equisights Research CEO, called it “portfolio reallocation and operating discipline” instead of something new for the stock. Reuters
Gil Luria, managing director at D.A. Davidson, said Microsoft was “managing down its workforce” to fund AI spending. Microsoft’s Chief People Officer Amy Coleman told staff that the cut jobs weren’t being replaced with AI, but said AI is shifting how work is done. Reuters
The competitive landscape is shifting. Microsoft last week announced Microsoft Frontier Company and committed $2.5 billion for big customers using AI, where Reuters said it faces competition from Palantir and Amazon Web Services. Judson Althoff, CEO of Microsoft Commercial Business, said Microsoft erred by linking Copilot to only OpenAI models. That comment points to a shift, as the company turns to more model choices with alternatives like Google’s Gemini, Anthropic and open-source tools making gains.
The risk is that strong AI demand might not show up fast as higher cash flow. Microsoft’s January numbers already rattled investors with slower cloud growth and record AI costs. Since then, shareholders have sued over what the company said about Azure and infrastructure spending; Microsoft says those suits have no merit. Rising memory-chip prices, higher data-center spend, and another Azure miss on July 29 could hand bears more to work with. Reuters
For now, it’s a basic trade and not an easy one. Microsoft is still treated as a top pick for enterprise AI exposure, but the shares act like the market is waiting for results instead of stories. Next up: July 29 earnings.
