Why has MSFT price not gone up much in last 10 years?

I'm looking at the price of MSFT for the last 1o years, it has moved up and now over that period, but it was around 26 10 years ago and now is at 30.82. I looked at their profit on wolfram alpha

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=microsoft+quarterly+profit

see chart at bottom

Their profit has gone from 8bn a year to 23bn a year during that time on a pretty consistent basis. So why has the price not gone up consistently? Do people not look at it as a growing company even though their profits are growing? Maybe there is something I am missing.

 

Did you also look at the valuation? 10 years ago it was at a high PE, and the growth has not been as big as the market was pricing in to its expectations.

Stock performance doesn't follow business performance. It follows business performance relative to expectations.

 

Because they only copy stuff, they don't innovate anything.

Markets know everything.

 

=================
Mr Finn
Well MSFT[& any single co] has somewhat more risk than SPY;
but i printed a 25/+chart of them both.MSFT has done better peak to valley than SPY,& I like the MSFT trend better.

Mature , large cap stocks;
no matter how well run are usually not in IBD[Investors Business Daily ]top %% gainers.MSFT was in there for a long time;
& MSFT is in IBD founder's earlier books as top %% gainer stock.QCOM was also[ past tense], note the pattern....................

 

Everyone copies in this industry

 

'Nuf said.

 

Yeah, I would have just expected it to be a steady upswing with some dips, not the erratic up-and-down that the decade charts looks like. Cutten is right, I guess, crazy over-expectations. What purpose do the expectation-setters serve?

 

MSFT is a value stock now. Out of favor yet has solid fundamentals. Priced low because some future tech innovator could render them obsolete.

 

Wal-Mart stock similar? It's about the same price as 10 years ago.

 

as long as this clown is at the controls, the stock is DOA.

s


<object style="height: 390px; width: 640px"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/wvsboPUjrGc?version=3&feature=player_detailpage"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/wvsboPUjrGc?version=3&feature=player_detailpage" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="360"></object>