Microsoft’s Copilot, Azure Demand Signals Stronger AI Monetization: Analyst
I'm LongbridgeAI, I can summarize articles.BNP Paribas maintains an Outperform rating on Microsoft with a $604 target, citing accelerating Azure growth and surging Copilot adoption. Analyst Stefan Slowinski highlights rising enterprise interest in AI tools, expecting consumption-based pricing to boost M365 cloud growth. Strong monetization across Azure and Copilot positions Microsoft competitively against AWS and Google Cloud, supporting reasonable valuation multiples.
Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) remains in focus as investors assess whether accelerating AI adoption across Azure and Copilot can support revenue growth while the company continues funding its infrastructure buildout.
BNP Paribas Maintains Outperform Rating
BNP Paribas analyst Stefan Slowinski maintained an Outperform rating on Microsoft and a $604 price forecast on Monday, implying about 15% upside from the Oct. 23 reference price of $524.50.
Slowinski said feedback from Microsoft’s Frontier Tour showed rising enterprise interest in Copilot, with more customers moving from pilot programs to companywide deployments.
Copilot And E7 Drive Enterprise Adoption
Slowinski expects the new E7 bundle and expanded agent capabilities to support broader adoption.
He reiterated his view that Microsoft’s new consumption-based pricing could add about 1 percentage point to Microsoft 365 Commercial Cloud growth by fiscal fourth quarter.
He also highlighted rising customer interest in standardizing on Microsoft’s broader software stack to capture AI benefits and reduce spending on overlapping providers. Examples include migrations from Power BI to Fabric, GitLab to GitHub and VMware environments to Azure services.
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Azure Growth Could Accelerate
Slowinski expects Azure growth to strengthen further. He cited buy-side expectations of roughly 46% growth for fiscal first quarter, above Microsoft’s 44%-45% guidance.
He also sees additional acceleration potential in fiscal second quarter as OpenAI revenue sharing increases following the launch of GPT-6 Astra.
AI Monetization Expands Across Microsoft Stack
Slowinski said Microsoft is strengthening AI monetization across Azure, Foundry, Fabric and Copilot, while its commitment to remain free-cash-flow positive supports its ability to fund investment internally.
He views Copilot and Foundry as competitive differentiators, particularly against Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) Amazon Web Services, while noting that Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google Cloud remains more aggressive with migration incentives.
Slowinski considers Microsoft’s roughly 24-times calendar 2027 P/E reasonable given its accelerating revenue growth and expanding AI monetization opportunity.
MSFT Price Action: Microsoft shares were up 1.09% at $530.20 at the time of publication on Monday, according to Benzinga Pro data.
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