Microsoft Investor Relations

A.Microsoft pays a quarterly dividend of $0.39 per share. Read the Dividend FAQ for more information.

A.Our common stock ticker symbol is MSFT. Microsoft common shares are traded on The  Nasdaq Stock Market.

A.Microsoft common shares are traded on The Nasdaq Stock Market. The ticker symbol is MSFT.

A.MSN® Money can provide a 15 minute delayed price, as well as other information regarding Microsoft stock.

A.Microsoft went public March 13, 1986 at $21.00 per share.

A.The offering price was $21.00 per share at the IPO on March 13, 1986.

A.You should contact Microsoft's transfer agent, American Stock Transfer, by one of these methods:
• Internet: https://www.astfinancial.com/
• E-mail: msft@amstock.com
• Phone: (800) 285-7772 option 1
• Address:
American Stock Transfer & Trust Company
P.O. Box 2362
New York, NY 10272-2362

A.594918104

A.The date and location for the 2017 Annual Shareholders Meeting has yet to be determined. The meeting is typically held in late November in the Seattle area.

A.The 2016 Annual Shareholders Meeting was held on November 30, 2016 at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, WA. Listen to the Webcast

A.Microsoft no longer offers preferred shares.

A.This corporate information page contains a variety of links regarding Microsoft.

A.This link will take you to Microsoft's Board of Directors. Click on each member's name to read their full biography.

A.Microsoft's independent auditor is Deloitte & Touche.

A.The Important Dates section provides a good overview of Microsoft’s history.

A.Microsoft's mission, as well as how we intend to deliver on our mission, are outlined on Mission and Values page.

A.Lots of information is available at the jobs site.

A.Microsoft was incorporated in the state of Washington on June 25, 1981; reincorporated in the state of Delaware on September 19, 1986; and reincorporated in the state of Washington on November 1, 1993.

A.Microsoft's past and current headcounts can be found on our Fast Facts About Microsoft page.

A.View our investments and acquisitions.

A.The general public is allowed to visit the Microsoft Visitor Center. Click here for hours and locations.

A.Visit our online Product Support Services. You can choose from a variety of options.

A.American Stock Transfer, Microsoft's transfer agent, administers a direct stock purchase plan and a dividend reinvestment program for the company. To find out more about these programs you may contact AST directly at (800) 285-7772, Option 1, between the hours of 5 A.M. and 5 P.M. Pacific Time, Monday through Fridays. Alternatively, you can the view program online by going to AST's Web site.

A.Microsoft pays a quarterly dividend of $0.39 per share. Read the press release.

A.This table lists the dividend payments, amounts, and key dates:

A.The Board of Directors makes the decision for any stock split. The most current split was a 2-for-1 common stock split announced on January 16, 2003. The stock will commence trading at the new split price February 18, 2003. This was our ninth stock split since going public March 13, 1986. Read the press release: Microsoft Declares Annual Dividend and Announces Two-for-One Split on Common Stock.

A.The most recent split was a 2-for-1 common stock split announced on January 16, 2003. The stock traded at the new split price on February 18, 2003. This was Microsoft's ninth stock split going public March 13, 1986. For more information, read the press release: Microsoft Declares Annual Dividend and Announces Two-for-One Split on Common Stock. After this most recent split, one original share equals 288 shares. This chart summarizes Microsoft's nine common stock splits since the initial public offering on March 13, 1986: *Type of split:
2 for 1 = One additional share for every share held (multiply the number of shares by 2 for a new total)
3 for 2 = One additional share for every two shares held (multiply the number of shares by 1.5 for a new total)

A.A 2-for-1 split means the investor will have twice as many shares as he had before, at half the market price. Here's an example: As of the record date (January 27, 2003) if an investor owns 100 shares of MSFT and the market price is $50.00/share, that investor's total value is $5,000.00. After the split, the investor will have 200 shares of stock, but the market price will be approximately $25.00/share. The investor's total investment value in MSFT remains the same at $5,000.00 until the stock price moves up or down.

A.The decision to split the stock was made by Microsoft's Board of Directors, based on a desire to make our stock more accessible to a broader range of investors.

A.This is the ninth time the company has split the stock since Microsoft went public back in March 1986. One original share will equal 288 shares after this split is effective.

A.Fourth quarter earnings for fiscal year 2017 will be released on July 20, 2017. A webcast of the conference call will be available from the Microsoft Investor Relations page. All earnings releases are on this Web site.

A.Microsoft's fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30. Earnings release dates for Fiscal Year 2017:

A.No, because of increased printing and distribution costs, as well as the commitment to the use of our own technologies, Microsoft no longer issues printed quarterly reports but focuses on electronic media instead. You can look at all earnings releases on this website.

A.Here is our 2016 Microsoft Annual Report online. You can also download a Microsoft Word version of the 2016 Annual Report. If you still require a hard copy version, go to our printed material order form and select "2016 Microsoft Annual Report."

A.You can go to our financial history page at this website to find various financial statements in html and Microsoft Word format, as well as financial graphs and charts to view.

A.Go to our Investor packet to view or download the company's financial reports. If you need to order materials to be delivered via postal mail, go to our printed material order form.

A.Go to our Investor packet to view or download the company's financial reports. If you need to order materials to be delivered via postal mail, go to our printed material order form.

A.The Microsoft corporate credit rating is AAA and Aaa by Standard & Poor's Rating Services and Moody's Investors Service Inc., respectively. The commercial paper is rated A-1+ by Standard & Poor's and P-1 by Moody's.

A.To purchase Microsoft bonds, please consult your financial advisor or broker.

A.XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) is a freely available electronic language for business reporting. It is an XML–based framework that provides the financial community a standards-based method to prepare, publish, reliably extract, and automatically exchange financial statements. Electronic availability of financial information and transparency of data is key in today's investor and analyst community. XBRL addresses the way financial data is communicated by using XML, a globally recognized standard for transmitting data. By putting financial data in an open, agreed upon standard format, XBRL is helping to revolutionize access to financial information over the Internet. XBRL does not establish new accounting standards, nor does it require additional disclosure from companies to outside audiences. XBRL focuses on enhancing the usability of financial information by means of a digital language of business which enables financial information to be available freely and transparently by the Internet. XBRL not only accommodates accounting standards and policies in place today but is also flexible enough to accommodate future accounting standards and direction.

A.XBRL is used to digitally publish financial statements and other relevant accounting disclosures of companies of all makes and sizes, both public and private. An XBRL-based financial statement contains the information found in traditional financial statements (such as the Balance Sheet, Income Statement, Cash Flow and Statement of Stockholders Equity) in a format that can more easily be recognized and understood by computers. From the creation process, XBRL documents can be exchanged reliably and published more easily. On the analytics side, XBRL enables a dramatic improvement in the processing of financial reports by allowing the information to be analyzed more quickly.

A.Microsoft publishes its financial statements and footnotes each quarter in XBRL in its Form 10-Q and Form 10-K filings. Investor Relations publishes financial statements webpages using XBRL. The XBRL tags are displayed inline in XBRL mode (<>).

A.XBRL brings standardization to today's business reporting supply chain. At its highest level, XBRL improves the efficiency of communication to investors, as well as the aggregation and analysis of business report information, such as financial statements. XBRL provides an electronic dictionary of terms that enable the tagging of business report information, which can then be transferred across disparate systems for use in activities such as analysis. It allows participants in the business reporting supply chain to spend less time doing data entry and cleansing, and more time on value-added activities like data analysis.
The following table summarizes how XBRL affects the various consumers of financial data: Additional XBRL benefits include:

A.XBRL increases the re-usability of financial statement information. Instead of creating multiple report outputs for multiple purposes, a single XBRL document can be created that addresses most needs. This reduces the number of total reports that need to be created and also reduces the re-keying of financial data for analytical and other purposes. Externally, investors will have better access to financial results because XBRL facilitates effective and timely analysis of that information.

A.In simple terms, HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is a system of marking up a document so it can be published on the World Wide Web. Documents prepared in HTML contain reference graphics and formatting tags. Put another way, HTML is a series of predefined tags that primarily focus on describing how content appears on the Web. For example, HTML describes the font, font size, and color of the text in this paragraph should be when viewed by a Web browser. HTML allowed the Internet to evolve from a text-based collection of data to the multimedia World Wide Web of today. HTML offers content but no real context. XML (Extensible Markup Language) is the universal format for data on the Web that uses tags to give context and structure to content. XML is a standards language that was ratified in February 1998 and is maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). XML does not replace HTML. Rather, XML is a complimentary format that is platform independent, allowing XML data to be rendered on any device, such as a computer, cell phone, personal digital assistant (PDA) or tablet device. XML allows developers to easily describe and deliver rich, structured data from any application in a standard, consistent way. Whereas HTML offers a fixed and predefined number of tags, XML neither defines nor limits tags. Instead, XML provides a framework for defining tags (i.e., taxonomy) and the relationship between them (i.e., schema). Finally, XBRL is an XML–based schema that focuses specifically on business reporting. XBRL is a complement to XML, allowing accountants and regulatory agencies to identify items that are unique to a given business reporting environment. The schema of XBRL defines how to create XBRL documents and XBRL taxonomies (or dictionaries) such as United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). These dictionaries provide a set of business reporting tags or terms that allow users to identify business information in a consistent format. XBRL is also extensible in that users are able to create their own XBRL dictionaries that define and describe tags unique to a given environment. An example of this type of dictionary is the Microsoft custom taxonomy, which can be found on the download page. By putting business report information in an XBRL format, software applications that support XBRL can read the underlying data more efficiently than today's traditional paper–, HTML–, or PDF–based report formats.