The Microsoft earnings conference call is this afternoon, 5:30 EDT.
You can sign up to listen to it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/investor/Events/default.aspx

It's always fascinating to listen to these and then to read the
journalists interpretations of what was said. It definitely gives you
perspective on how much bias there is in what you read in the press.

There's still time to participate in our contest to try and project
what earnings they will announce. Don't forget, the club who is
closest will receive a $20 credit toward their next subscription
renewal. Make sure you make your entries by 2PM EDT today.

You can enter them here:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dEtYZU54RHN4RDhKa3BxWjF1LVJDemc6MA

I've attached the spreadsheet you can use to make your estimate.

On Tuesday and Wednesday I discussed the first two of the judgments
you need to make, revenue growth and net margin. The final judgment
you will make to project earnings is the number of diluted shares they
will have outstanding. It's important to keep an eye on how the
number of shares outstanding is affecting their reported earnings per
share. You want your EPS growth to come from the business being more
successful, not to manipulation of numbers by playing with the number
of shares outstanding. It is a number I think is pretty difficult to
project too far into the future. It will depend on a lot of things
including how management needs to capitalize their operations, how
many stock options and other stock rewards they will be issuing to
employees, whether they feel the most effective use of their cash is
to purchase back shares and even whether they need a little extra
boost to help their earnings out for the quarter.

The average number of diluted shares they had outstanding for the most
recent 4 quarters was 8913.25. For the most recent quarter they had
8843 shares outstanding.

Good luck!

--
Laurie Frederiksen
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