Microsoft shares close lower on Monday, tech giant continues working on JEDI contract despite protest by Amazon

In an interview with CNBC, Microsoft Corp’s President Brad Smith said that Amazon’s decision to protest the Pentagon’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract had not made Microsoft delay its work on the huge cloud computing deal.

The US Department of Defense awarded the $10 billion JEDI contract to Microsoft Corp on October 25th. Meanwhile, in November, Amazon filed a notice in the US Court of Federal Claims, expressing intentions to protest the DoD’s decision.

Microsoft shares closed lower for the fourth time in the past ten trading sessions on NASDAQ on Monday. The stock went down 0.26% ($0.39) to $151.36, after touching an intraday high at $152.20, or a price level not seen since November 29th ($152.30).

Shares of Microsoft Corporation have surged 49.02% so far in 2019 compared with a 25.10% gain for the benchmark index, S&P 500 (SPX).

In 2018, Microsoft’s stock went up 18.74%, thus, it again outperformed the S&P 500, which registered a 6.24% loss.

In an interview with CNBC, Amazon’s AWS head Andy Jassy said that the cloud contract was awarded unfairly. “You know, there was significant political interference here,” Amazon’s Jassy said, cited by CNBC.

“When you have a sitting president who’s willing to be very vocal that they dislike a company and the CEO of that company, it makes it difficult for government agencies, including the DoD to make objective decisions without fear of reprisal. And I think that’s dangerous and risky for our country,” Jassy also said.

“In any technology race, if you think that you’re so far ahead that you can’t possibly lose, you’re probably going to lose. That’s what we’ve learned time and time again,” Microsoft’s Smith said over the weekend in response to Jassy’s remarks.

“There’s a second lesson that applied to ourselves — never conclude that you’re so far behind that you can’t catch up if you work harder than your competitor. So we put more and more engineers working pretty much 7 days a week for 13 months to constantly create a better product,” Smith added.

Analyst stock price forecast and recommendation

According to CNN Money, the 29 analysts, offering 12-month forecasts regarding Microsoft Corp’s stock price, have a median target of $160.00, with a high estimate of $174.00 and a low estimate of $155.00. The median estimate represents a 5.71% upside compared to the closing price of $151.36 on December 9th.

The same media also reported that at least 27 out of 33 surveyed investment analysts had rated Microsoft Corp’s stock as “Buy”, while 4 – as “Hold”.