One of the judgments you'll need to make to project first quarter
earnings for Microsoft is the percentage that revenue has grown since
the same quarter a year ago. At that time, quarterly revenue(sales)
were $12920 Million.

There are various places you can go for inputs that might help you
determine how much of an increase to expect this year. For example,
if your club owns Microsoft, you should have made a prediction about
revenue growth when you decided to buy it. ManifestInvesting shows
that sales will grow at 8% a year for the next 5 years. If you go to
the Analysts Estimates link at finance.yahoo.com, you will see the
average Analysts estimate for sales growth for this quarter is 22.4%
The range of revenue growth projections lies between 18.6% and 25.23%

The year to year growth for the most recent quarter was 22.4%

To get into more depth, there is a whole section in the Management
Discussion and Analysis section of the most recent 10-K report where
management discusses revenue growth .
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/789019/000119312510171791/d10k.htm#tx28259_11

They also discuss what they see for this Quarter in the Conference
call they held to announce the June Quarter results. You can find a
transcript with lots of information in it here:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/216013-microsoft-corporation-f4q10-qtr-end-06-30-10-earnings-call-transcript?part=qanda

If you own shares in a company, it is important to understand where
it's sales come from. The more you understand this, the better
judgments you can make about what sales will be in the future.
Without sales growth, it's pretty hard to sustain earnings growth.
Without earnings growth, the stock price will probably not grow
either. Projecting sales growth is a skill that you will get better
at by practicing it. Have fun in your club each month challenging
yourselves to project what the quarterly results will be for the
companies you own. If you get good at it, it will pay off for you!

--
Laurie Frederiksen
Invest with your friends!
www.bivio.com

Become our Facebook friend!  www.facebook.com/bivio
Follow us on twitter!  www.twitter.com/bivio