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>As AllThingsD‘s John Paczkowski wrote on Friday: “Here’s one metric by which Ballmer will be judged harshly. On the last day of 1999, the day before he took ov

by leaffig 13y ago

>As AllThingsD‘s John Paczkowski wrote on Friday: “Here’s one metric by which Ballmer will be judged harshly. On the last day of 1999, the day before he took over as CEO, Microsoft’s market capitalization was $600 billion That fails to take into account, the crazy dotcom valuation days and the subsequent big crash in 2000. Not to say that Ballmer did great as a CEO but that's just poor reporting. Microsoft did have its great growth days, like Apple recently did before petering out, but it was back in the 80s.

sytelus 13y ago
Even when you compare post-bubble market cap, say from 2002 to now, it's shockingly bad performance for Microsoft: AAPL: $5 billion -> $465 billion GOOG: $16 billion -> $288 billion MSFT: $217 billion -> $291 billion I know now you might nitpick that AAPL and GOOG were very small in 2002 and not comparable to saturated markets Microsoft operates in. In that case, take example of even non-tech well established companies: AT&T: $72 billion -> $203 billion StarBucks: $7 billion -> $53 billion However you can still argue that Microsoft increased its revenue 3 folds and profit 2 folds under Ballmer. That might be good metric to measure Ballmer's performance but this does not discount for inflation (36%) and auto-accumulating multi-year enterprise contracts that have been pilling up since Gates era (unknown value).
- deleted 13y ago
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- shalmanese 13y ago
  This is largely an artifact of survivorship bias. If you compare MS to it's peers: GE: $372B -> $239B MS: $326B -> $239B Exxon: $299B -> $403B Wal-Mart: $273B -> $247B Citigroup: $255B -> $134B Pfizer: $249B -> $207B Intel: $203B -> $108B BP: $200B -> $130B Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporations_by_market_capitalization#2002 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporations_by_market_... http://www.ft.com/intl/indepth/ft500 http://www.ft.com/intl/indepth/ft500
- smackfu 13y ago
  So the revenue went up 3x and profit 2x, and the valuation stayed flat, and that is a failure of the company? What crazy world are we living in?
joshuaheard 13y ago
Agreed, it fails to take into account the Clinton DOJ anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft which basically popped the dotcom stock bubble. The stock has remained flat then grown steadily since. The article also fails to mention the growth of annual revenue which has raised steadily and has tripled under Balmer's watch. At the moment, Microsoft stock pays a 3% stock dividend which is a pretty good investment return, so it's less important for the stock to appreciate.

by leaffig 13y ago

sytelus 13y ago

Even when you compare post-bubble market cap, say from 2002 to now, it's shockingly bad performance for Microsoft: AAPL: $5 billion -> $465 billion GOOG: $16 billion -> $288 billion MSFT: $217 billion -> $291 billion I know now you might nitpick that AAPL and GOOG were very small in 2002 and not comparable to saturated markets Microsoft operates in. In that case, take example of even non-tech well established companies: AT&T: $72 billion -> $203 billion StarBucks: $7 billion -> $53 billion However you can still argue that Microsoft increased its revenue 3 folds and profit 2 folds under Ballmer. That might be good metric to measure Ballmer's performance but this does not discount for inflation (36%) and auto-accumulating multi-year enterprise contracts that have been pilling up since Gates era (unknown value).

deleted 13y ago
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shalmanese 13y ago
This is largely an artifact of survivorship bias. If you compare MS to it's peers: GE: $372B -> $239B MS: $326B -> $239B Exxon: $299B -> $403B Wal-Mart: $273B -> $247B Citigroup: $255B -> $134B Pfizer: $249B -> $207B Intel: $203B -> $108B BP: $200B -> $130B Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporations_by_market_capitalization#2002 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporations_by_market_... http://www.ft.com/intl/indepth/ft500 http://www.ft.com/intl/indepth/ft500
smackfu 13y ago
So the revenue went up 3x and profit 2x, and the valuation stayed flat, and that is a failure of the company? What crazy world are we living in?

joshuaheard 13y ago

Agreed, it fails to take into account the Clinton DOJ anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft which basically popped the dotcom stock bubble. The stock has remained flat then grown steadily since. The article also fails to mention the growth of annual revenue which has raised steadily and has tripled under Balmer's watch. At the moment, Microsoft stock pays a 3% stock dividend which is a pretty good investment return, so it's less important for the stock to appreciate.