Microsoft (MSFT 0.32%) is one of the world's largest and most influential tech companies. It's also the most valuable public company in the world at the moment at $3.4 trillion. In addition to providing cloud-computing services, market-leading operating systems, and productivity software, the technology giant is also at the forefront of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution.
Strong earnings results and emerging opportunities in AI have helped power strong performance for the company's stock lately. The software giant's share price is up 34% over the last year alone.
Even more impressive, the stock has delivered a return of more than 1,160% since Satya Nadella became the company's CEO in February 2014. That means that if you invested $1,000 on the day Nadella took over on Feb. 4, 2014, your investment would now be worth more than $12,570.
Nadella has worked wonders at Microsoft
With Microsoft on a winning streak, it might be easy to forget that the company was facing some major challenges at the time Nadella took over in the CEO role. Due to some failed projects and unproductive strategic directions, the company and its stock had a rocky start to the 2010s. But Microsoft managed to deliver an incredible turnaround.
Nadella spearheaded a pivot to a new strategy that focused on subscription services. The company shifted Office and other software away from being one-time licensing purchases and instead started selling them on a subscription basis. This made the company's sales more dependable and also helped boost margins.
He also oversaw the strategic prioritization and growth of the company's Azure cloud infrastructure services. Azure has grown at an incredible rate over the last decade, and it currently stands as the second-largest player by market share -- trailing behind only Amazon's AWS.
Microsoft's cloud business is generating strong sales, growing rapidly, and posting impressive profit margins. It's also helped the company tap into emerging AI-driven demand, and the best is likely still to come.
