Posted: Aug. 9, 2004

At his speech at the 2004 Financial Analysts Meeting, CEO Steve Ballmer gave some rough estimates of how much Microsoft's profits from its core business (excepting investment income and unusual expenses such as legal settlements) could grow between now and FY'08:

So, with the option transfer program out, and legal [expenses] out, and putting investment income aside, we made about US$13.8 billion in pretax operating income in the fiscal year that just ended….Over the next four years we might be able to grow a whole Nokia, a whole Siemens, potentially even a whole Intel. I was tempted, I'll admit, to write an IBM on here. But, I'll tell you, I think it's out of reach in four years.

Presuming that Ballmer was talking about these companies' results on the same basis—that is pretax operating income based on day-to-day operations (e.g., excluding one-time gains and expenses, depreciation, amortization, and gains and losses on investments):

• "A whole Nokia" equals about US$6.3 billion
• "A whole Siemens" equals about US$3.0 billion
• "A whole Intel" equals about US$8.5 billion
• "An IBM" equals about US$11.3 billion.