Microsoft Stock Upgraded After Goldman Sachs Admits It Was Wrong

Shares of Microsoft Corp. rose 0.3% on Friday after Goldman Sachs upgraded to stock to neutral from sell on the company's cloud computing opportunities through Office 365 and Azure. Analyst Heather Bellini turned bullish on the stock after years of bearishness, saying Goldman had previously "failed to appreciate" the stock's ability to disconnect from previous headwinds and move higher related to its transition to the cloud. "We were wrong," she said in a note to clients. She increased fiscal 2016 non-GAAP earnings per share estimates to reflect the opportunities in the company's cloud business, though hedged by saying consensus estimates for fiscal-year 2017 and 2018 still seem too high. Shares of Microsoft have risen 28% over the last three months, outperforming the Dow Jones Industrial Average's 7% gain. They ticked up to $55.87 in premarket trade Friday.