Microsoft shares trade around $518, within about 5% of their record close of $542 set last October, yet the company hasn't split its stock since February 2003. A split would ease Microsoft's outsized weight in the price-weighted Dow Jones Industrial Average, but peers that recently split traded far higher than Microsoft does now.
Microsoft stock sat around $518 as of this writing, within about 5% of its record close of $542 set last October. The company split its shares nine times in its first 17 years as a public company, turning one IPO share bought in March 1986 into 288 shares today. But the last of those splits, a 2-for-1, took effect in February 2003, and the board hasn't announced another since.
Microsoft once split well below today's price
The first eight splits happened between 1987 and 1999, and each time the stock closed somewhere between about $98 and $178 right before the split took effect. The 2003 split came at a pre-split price of about $48, and a long flat stretch followed. Microsoft shares didn't close back over $50 until October 2015, more than 12 years later. They then cleared $100 in June 2018 and crossed $178 in February 2020.
That climb has come alongside a much bigger business. Microsoft's fiscal 2026 revenue, for the year ended June 30, rose 18% to $331.8 billion, a pickup from 15% growth in fiscal 2025 and 16% in fiscal 2024. Non-GAAP earnings per share grew 22% to $17.28.
Peers split at much higher prices
Nvidia, Broadcom, and Netflix have all split their shares recently, but at prices well above Microsoft's current level. Nvidia closed at around $950 the day it announced its 10-for-1 split in May 2024. Netflix was at about $1,090 when it announced its split in October 2025, and Broadcom at about $1,500 a month after Nvidia's announcement. All three said the move was at least partly about making shares more accessible to employees. Fidelity lets investors buy a piece of a Nasdaq- or NYSE-listed stock for as little as $1, a feature that can make a high share price matter less than it once did.
A split would shrink Microsoft's Dow weight
Because the Dow Jones Industrial Average is price-weighted, a stock's influence depends on its share price rather than its market cap. That makes Microsoft a heavyweight: by the Fool writer's own calculation, it accounts for about 6% of the index now, the third-biggest weight after Goldman Sachs and Caterpillar. A 2-for-1 stock split like Microsoft's last one would cut that to about 3%. A 10-for-1 split like Nvidia's would send the shares to about $52, above only Nike among the Dow's 30 stocks, pulling Microsoft's weight down to about 0.6%.
Verizon Communications was only about 0.5% of the Dow when it was removed from the index in June, and S&P Dow Jones Indices said stocks with persistently low prices have an immaterial effect on the Dow. Given that, a split close to the 2-for-1 scale of Microsoft's past looks more plausible than a 10-for-1 move, if the board acts at all.
Source: Motley Fool
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