Microsoft Share Price History
Microsoft Corporation is headquartered in Redmond, Washington near Seattle. Most Intel microprocessor-based personal computers run on the Microsoft Windows software operating system, the first version of which was released in August 1981. Microsoft went public through an initial public offering on Mar. 13, 1986. The company's stock trades on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the MSFT stock symbol.
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IPO -- 1989
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The early days are the most frantic for any IPO. Microsoft was no different. The company's stock made news almost every day. The shares closed at about $28 per share, or $0.10 split-adjusted, on Mar. 13, 1986, the date of the IPO date. Split-adjusted prices are adjusted for stock splits. There were nine such splits between 1987 and 2003. In August 1989, Microsoft launched Office, which includes Word and Excel. The shares closed at about $87, or $0.60 split-adjusted, on Dec. 29, 1989, a six-fold increase since the IPO.
1990 -- 1999
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Microsoft launched Windows 3.0 in early 1990. The shares closed the year at around $75, or $1.05 split-adjusted. Windows 95, released on Aug. 24, 1995, marked Microsoft's transformation to the Internet era. Shares closed 1995 at about $88, or $5.50 split-adjusted, a 55-fold increase since the IPO. Microsoft and Intel joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average market index on Nov. 1, 1999. Microsoft shares closed out the millennium on Dec. 31, 1999 at around $116, or $58 split-adjusted. This represented about a 580-fold increase since its IPO in 1986. It also represented the high-water mark for the next decade.
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2000 -- 2009
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Steve Ballmer replaced the founder, Bill Gates, as President and Chief Executive Officer on Jan. 13, 2000. The stock price at the end of 2000 was $43, or $21 split-adjusted---about a 200-fold increase since the IPO, but a 65 percent drop as the company's stock was caught up in the dot-com crash of 2000. The share price stayed within a narrow, split-adjusted $25 to $35 range for most of the decade. In January 2003, the company started paying dividends. Microsoft launched Windows 7 on Oct. 22, 2009. The shares closed 2009 at around $30.
2010
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As a new decade began, the technology landscape features iPads, Facebook, Twitter and, of course, Google. Microsoft almost seemed like an old-economy company by comparison. On Nov. 11, 2010, the shares closed at around $26. Interestingly, that was about the same split-adjusted price on June 25, 1998, the date of its Windows 98 operating system launch. Microsoft was no longer a growth story, but, as a Dow Jones Industrial Average member, it was still regarded as a software industry bellwether.
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