Microsoft's underperformance has investors looking to cloud for growth

Microsoft is in the middle of the artificial intelligence boom, but it's been a while since investors have seen the rewards.

The software giant's stock price is up less than 8% in the past year. That's by far the weakest gain among the eight U.S. tech megacap companies. Apple has the next slimmest increase at 19%, followed by Alphabet at 26%. All the others are up at least 48%, and Tesla is the top performer in the group, up 117%.

Microsoft is also badly trailing the tech-heavy Nasdaq, which has gained 25% in the past year.

That's the backdrop heading into Microsoft's quarterly earnings report Wednesday. The company is kicking off tech earnings season, along with Meta and Tesla. Apple follows on Thursday, and Alphabet and Amazon report next week.

The biggest question for Microsoft shareholders surrounds the company's Azure cloud-computing business and whether it will show accelerating growth.

In October, Microsoft told investors that demand for Azure services outstripped supply because of a delay from a third-party provider. Finance chief Amy Hood said she still foresees an increase in Azure's growth rate in the first half of 2025, but for the December quarter, she called for 31% to 32% growth at constant currency, which would be down from 34% in the prior period. Microsoft's stock slipped 6% the next day.

Since the last quarter of 2023, Azure growth has increased by 2 percentage points. Meanwhile, top rivals Amazon and Alphabet have seen cloud growth over that stretch accelerate by 7 points and 13 points, respectively. It's a matter of particular importance to investors, because Microsoft now has tens of billions of dollars in quarterly capital expenditures to meet cloud and AI needs of customers.

A Microsoft spokesperson