Microsoft reveals share buyback plans for this upcoming year

This upcoming year is pretty significant for the software giants Microsoft. They are due to launch two of the most important products in their history namely Windows Vista and Office 2007.

This has enabled them to lift its full-year earnings outlook as they expect strong demands for these two software products. Microsoft also interestingly announced plans to buy back as much as $40 billion of its stock.

Microsoft is targeting to buy back 8 percent of its stock for up to $20 billion in a tender offer next month. These two announcements helped the company gain at the stock market as the share price went up by around 5%.

The company reported a net profit of $2.83 billion, or 28 cents per diluted share. This was down from a net profit of $3.7 billion, or 34 cents per share they posted in the same period last year.