{"id":265803,"date":"2026-02-03T17:18:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T17:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/265803\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T17:18:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T17:18:10","slug":"microsoft-is-the-best-pure-play-on-ai-adoption-says-piper-sandler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/265803\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft is the best &#8216;pure play&#8217; on AI adoption, says Piper Sandler"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After Microsoft&#8217;s big fall following its earnings report last week, Piper Sandler is naming the stock as a top pick in software. Despite posting an earnings and revenue beat , Microsoft shares tumbled nearly 10% Thursday after investors were concerned by slowing growth in its Azure platform and other cloud services offerings. Piper Sandler, though, thinks investors are overreacting and Microsoft is still a big winner in the AI trade. &#8220;We see Microsoft as perhaps the best pure-play on AI adoption today,&#8221; wrote analyst Billy Fitzsimmons in a Monday note. &#8220;Respondents to our 2H25 CIO survey were incrementally positive on both Azure and Copilot activity. We should be buyers on the pullback post-F2Q26 results.&#8221; The shares were down another 2.6% on Tuesday despite the bullish Piper call. MSFT 5D mountain MSFT five-day chart The investment firm has an overweight rating on Microsoft shares and a price target of $600, implying more than 41% upside from Monday&#8217;s close. Fitzsimmons wrote that AI demand &#8220;will continue to outpace supply&#8221; in 2026 and 2027, which will boost both Azure and Microsoft Copilot adoption. And while Piper Sandler is worried about AI adoption for the software sector broadly, that isn&#8217;t the case with its view for Microsoft, particularly because it thinks the hyperscaler can afford adapting to the technology. &#8220;We believe Microsoft is best positioned to benefit from the elevated AI infrastructure spending,&#8221; Fitzsimmons wrote. &#8220;We also believe Microsoft is in a better financial position than some peers to make the necessary capital expenditures, with a robust balance sheet and expectations that free cash flow remains soundly positive over the next few years.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After Microsoft&#8217;s big fall following its earnings report last week, Piper Sandler is naming the stock as a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,553,2338,5741,111,139,69,2340,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-265803","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-business-news","12":"tag-investment-strategy","13":"tag-microsoft-corp","14":"tag-new-zealand","15":"tag-newzealand","16":"tag-nz","17":"tag-stock-markets","18":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}