Well, it appears I read too much into Microsoft's cautionary statements issued with their earnings release. It appears, by the comments following, that analysts are not concerned (good call, dav):
In a statement and conference call with analysts Maffei warned the company's sales growth rate would slow to the ''high teens'' in fiscal 2000 from 29 percent in the year just ended. And he said profit margins had peaked for now as Microsoft squeezed all the costs it could out of its business model by shifting to sales of licenses instead of packaged software.
''The easy money has been made there,'' he said. ''It's hard to see how we're going to see significant margin enhancements in fiscal '00, and frankly I think we're going to be lucky to keep them constant.''
Maffei said in the interview he remained comfortable with the First Call consensus estimate that the company would earn $1.54 a share in fiscal 2000, up just 8.5 percent from the $1.42 posted for the year
just ended.
Analysts said they were not surprised by the company's cautionary stance.
''Their comments about next year's results were characteristically cautious, citing familiar caveats -- economic growth and PC demand,'' said analyst Rick Sherlund of Goldman Sachs. ''I did not hear any
major stock-impacting news conveyed on the call.''
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