Late last year, I wrote about a US stock that I thought most, if not all, ASX investors would benefit from owning.
I'll reiterate what I said then: The ASX is full of wonderful companies, but almost none can offer the world-dominating firepower of the best names on the American stock markets.
My initial American stock from last month was none other than payments giant Mastercard Inc (NYSE: MA). At the time, I discussed the potency of this company's business model, given many of us would have its logo on one of our debit or credit cards.
Today, I'm going to discuss another US stock that offers (what I think to be) an equally lucrative opportunity for ASX investors to buy into one of the world's best companies. That company is none other than Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT).
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A US stock that any Australian can buy today
Microsoft is a company that needs little introduction to most Australians, despite its born-and-bred American heritage.
This company is perhaps most well known for its pioneering Windows operating system, which has been the default for home desktop computers for decades.
However, this US stock's reach percolates through many more aspects of our daily lives. Chances are you regularly use one of Microsoft's flagship Office programs, perhaps Word, Teams, PowerPoint, or Excel, in your personal or professional life.
If you own a small business, or are part of a larger one, you might also be familiar with Microsoft's Azure cloud services. Or its corporate-focused social media platform LinkedIn.
After work, you or your kids might like to fire up an Xbox gaming console, which is also a Microsoft product.
And we haven't even discussed Microsoft's investment in ChatGPT-owner OpenAI, which has arguably set the company up extremely well in the artificial intelligence (AI) race.
Microsoft, like its fellow US stock Mastercard, is one of those rare companies whose products help write the narratives of our daily lives.
The above qualitative analysis is all well and good. But let's look at some numbers.
Microsoft's numbers
Back in November, we got a look at this US stock's latest quarterly earnings report. As our Fool colleagues across the Pacific covered at the time, these earnings saw Microsoft report a 16% rise in revenues year-over-year to US$65.6 billion. Earnings per share (EPS) grew by 10% to US$3.30.
These are some healthy growth numbers in my opinion, particularly for a US$3.1 trillion (with a 'T'!) company.
But there are some other signs that Microsoft will continue to be a lucrative investment. It is a bit of a sleeper dividend stock too. Microsoft currently trades on a dividend yield of around 0.8%.
However, the company has increased its annual dividend for the past 20 years, and by an average of 10.26% over the past five years. Yet, this US stock is still only paying out around 25% of its profits as dividends. This indicates that there is plenty of dividend growth left in the tank.
Microsoft stock isn't cheap right now, with a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of roughly 34.3 However, given this company's ongoing importance to everyday life, as well as its substantial investments in cutting-edge AI technology, I think this US stock will be a winner for all investors for decades to come.
