Perhaps the surest sign that Wall Street doesn't think of Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) as a "true" tech stock anymore is that analysts (and company management) talk about company performance in stodgy year-on-year terms - not the go-go growth sequential comparisons that are so common elsewhere in tech. Be that as it may, even a lumbering giant can cover a lot of ground simply by falling forward, and there may be more potential here than its current price suggests.

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A Tepid Midwinter Report
Microsoft's fiscal second quarter earnings don't really help the case of investors and analysts who believe Microsoft has more growth potential than the market believes. After all, revenue rose just 5% for the quarter, while operating income fell 2%. While the top number was a little weak relative to analyst guesses, the bottom line number was a little better and operating margin was a little stronger than most analysts expected. (For related reading on operating income, see Analyzing Operating Margins.)

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Revenue was definitely impacted by the weak PC market, as Windows revenue fell about 6%. Microsoft management suggested a weaker year-on-year PC market than Gartner and that raises the possibility that the company is losing more market share to tablets (which, really, means Apple (Nasdaq:AAPL)) than management cares to admit.

Other performance highlights include decent (albeit slightly soft) 11% growth in Server and Tools, while Online Services revenue rose 10% as the company's Yahoo! (Nasdaq:YHOO) partnership has pushed market share above 25%. Entertainment was surprisingly strong (up almost 15%), but this is something of a mixed blessing given the lower margins of the business.

Playing for the Win (8)
For quite some time now, Microsoft stock has been driven by the periodic new Windows release cycles. With Windows 8 in the wings, that's in play once again. Microsoft is also putting in the work to try to make this a more viable platform for mobile devices, as it is developing versions to support devices running on ARM Holdings (Nasdaq:ARMH) chip technology. That's a different architecture than Intel (Nasdaq:INTC), so there are going to be some challenges here.

Longer term, the company is trying to put itself in better position for two of the most significant trends in tech - mobile and cloud. While IBM (NYSE:IBM), Oracle (Nasdaq:ORCL) and SAP (NYSE:SAP) are making significant acquisitions to build up their cloud offerings, Windows is putting a lot on the success of Azure as a development platform for cloud applications. In mobile, it may all come down to the success of Nokia's (NYSE:NOK) Lumia - at least insofar as the Street's willingness to give any credibility to a rebound in Microsoft's mobile aspirations.


The Bottom Line
Second quarter earnings suggest that Microsoft management is more operationally adept than many are willing to acknowledge. Even though the management team is broadly unpopular, the margin performance in this quarter deserves some credit.

In the longer term analysis of what Microsoft is worth, it still appears that the Street gives very little credit to Microsoft evolving with the times. Forecast just 2% free cash flow growth (slower than the pace of inflation) and the stock is worth $40. Likewise, run the stock through an excess returns model and it looks like the Street is pricing in a 50% haircut in future returns. (Free cash flow is a great gauge of corporate health, but it's not immune to accounting trickery. For more, see Free Cash Flow: Free, But Not Always Easy.)

The assumption, then, is that Apple, Google (Nasdaq:GOOG) and the cloud companies are going to just chew up more and more Microsoft's revenue base in the coming years. Although Microsoft is unlikely to ever be a Google or Apple-type grower again, these assumptions of accelerating irrelevance could make this a solid contrarian bet over the next year or two.

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At the time of writing, Stephen Simpson did not own shares in any of the companies mentioned in this article.