Microsoft celebrates Pride Month – except not where it costs them

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Ah, it’s that time of the year again. Companies are displaying multi-colored flags on their social media accounts and even occasionally goad employers to partake in parades and obligatory diversity training sessions. This is especially prevalent in tech businesses, as they have more money to spend on activities not related to productivity.

But there is a limit to that, and after all, corporations carefully weigh whether to present themselves certain affiliations. And here’s how Microsoft, owner of the Xbox video game console brand decided to eat the cake and have the LGBT cake at the same time. We could call it “a Schrodinger’s gay”.

Here’s how Microsoft presents its Xbox Twitter profiles:

United States

France

Germany

Great Britain

And here’s how Microsoft presents itself today in certain other countries.

Saudi Arabia

Turkey

Russia

Poland

The striking difference, there is not a single bit of mention on these social media accounts about “Pride Month” as it’s commonly called. Saudi, Turkish, Russians or Polish players won’t be able to learn whether Microsoft is endorsing gays or not, as there is not a scrap of information on these profiles. Instead, for example, Poland has tweets about International Childrens Day, Russian get informed about some kind of esports event and Saudis can read about current deals on games. No Pride Month for you, backward Russians.

These profiles are curated and protected from any LGBT mentions and even retweets, with a carefully executed social media strategy. While “Pride Month accounts” have the same universal profile pics with a rainbow iconography, the other accounts retained a generic “20 years of Xbox” profile image. There must be “LGBT unfriendly” country list at Microsoft, used as a basis to decide whether to publish the rainbow flag or not.

After all, no one would want to offend certain customers, by posting rainbow pictures on the bird app.

Is Microsoft evil?

Homosexuality is punishable by flogging in Saudi Arabia. You can get up to 450 lashes for being gay in this country. People convicted twice face automatic execution. Transexuals can expect even worse fate, as two transgender people from Pakistan were “packed in sacks, thrashed with sticks and tortured to death” by Saudi police.

So should we condemn Microsoft, maybe becoming a Nintendo gaymer instead? Well, it’s a business. Microsoft is publicly-traded company listed on NASDAQ and it has legal obligations to its shareholders not to damage their profits. In this case they would harm sales by putting up a fight with their own customers, video game players from more conservatively leaning countries. After all, markets where LGBT community members are persecuted, like Saudi Arabia, are rich and ripe for taking. But then, let’s not pretend all these corporate gay equality activities aren’t about the money.

Should you buy Microsoft stock?

Pandemic? Not for Microsoft.

Technicals for current session (5 min tick chart).

Oh yeah. As you can see, the company management is clearly knowing what they’re doing. Microsoft is expanding as rapidly as ever. Technicals are great as usual and with 1-yr change of 35.52% it outperforms NASDAQ100. Given huge capitalization of 1,86T, it’s really excellent result. Microsoft is money-making machine with an outstanding balance sheet and an inexhaustible source of income, which includes operating system, software, cloud solutions and even gaming. It even pays out some dividends (yield below 0.9%) to encourage long-term holding. I rate it higher than FAANG stocks and there’s no reason you shouldn’t pick up MSFT. Microsoft has been a winner for a long time, and it will continue to climb, considering it has such shrewd executives.

I provide advisory, consulting, SEO services, financial content and marketing stunts for the industry. Among my clients are banks, brokers, crypto and fintech entities, encompasing Fortune 500 companies. I held various managerial positions, including CCO.

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