By Tiernan Ray
In response to Microsoft’s (MSFT) plan to sell $2.25 billion of bonds in maturities of 2015, 2020, and 2040, Bloomberg’s Sapna Maheshwari and John Detrixhe this afternoon write that the offering signals 2011 is, “more the year of the shareholder than the year of the bondholder,” citing money manager Tom Murphy with Columbia Management, based in Minneapolis.
The bond sale, which may lead to dividends or buybacks from Microsoft, indicates there’s a big payoff for common stock holders from the continued ability of triple-AAA issuers such as Microsoft to get historically favorable rates in the credit market.
As Dow Jones Newswires’s Katy Burne wrote earlier today, the issues have yields 0.38, 0.48 and 0.68 percentage points over comparable Treasuries, for coupons of 2.5%, 4%, and 5.25%.
(The original Microsoft debt filing, before the bonds were priced, is available here.)
Remains to be seen, of course, if dividends and buybacks will do the trick for Microsoft’s stock. The shares were down 29 cents, or 1%, today at $27.65. The stock is off about 1% so far this year.