5 Safe Stocks To Invest in For The Long Term in 2022

2. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 262

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is a tech giant which provides software and computer hardware services around the globe. It also recently featured on Time Magazine’s list of the most influential companies in the world.

Jefferies analyst Brent Thill on March 16 noted that Microsoft Corporation’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) emerging Power Platform, which is used for app-building and data insights, could be the company’s ‘next growth engine’ and a “multi-billion dollar growth pillar’, with the long-term user opportunity of over 1 billion, as compared to 20 million users today. He gave Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) a ‘Buy’ rating and a price target of $400.

In the fourth quarter, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) reported earnings per share of $2.48, beating consensus estimates by $0.16. $51.73 billion in revenue for the quarter was an increase of 20.09% year-on-year, and exceeded estimates by $938.45 million.

262 hedge funds were bullish on Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) in Q4 2021, with combined holdings of more than $75 billion. This shows growing investor confidence over the previous quarter, where 25o hedge funds were shareholders of the firm. Fisher Asset Management held a position in Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) consisting of 26.84 million shares worth more than $9 billion, making it the top shareholder of the firm in the fourth quarter.

Investment firm ClearBridge Investments talked about Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) in its Q4 2021 investor letter. Here’s what the fund said:

“Despite these mixed emerging growth results, the ClearBridge Global Growth Strategy outperformed the benchmark due to resilience among our secular and structural growth holdings. The bulk of these contributions came from U.S. mega-cap growth stocks Apple and Microsoft which continued to uniquely act both offensively and defensively as they have through most of the pandemic.”