Liddell Goes for Growth
Microsoft’s money man from Matamata is seeking to revive the company’s stock price with a story of significant growth based on a raft of new product releases. Chris Liddell says that Wall St is “starting to see some tangible evidence of some of the innovation and investment that’s gone on the last few years. The pipeline of product releases over the next 12 to 18 months is probably the highest it’s ever been in the company’s history.” CFO Liddell stated in his presentation to the Financial Analyst Meeting on 28 July that “we intend to continue to drive growth, we intend to continue to maximize the cash flow that we can get from our businesses, and we intend to continue to aggressively invest in our future, all of which has a view to driving shareholder value. The performance of this company has been outstanding over the last five years, but we believe there’s no reason why the next five years won’t be even better.” Asked how he was planning to mesh with the Microsoft culture, Liddell said “It’s pretty simple really. Be extremely good at what I do.”