Mason Morfit
Mason Morfit

Activist investor ValueAct said in a regulatory filing today that it has acquired an additional 2.95 million shares of Microsoft stock, for about $117 million in a series of purchases made late last week. The purchases have increased ValueAct’s total holdings to about 74.2 million shares, though it still controls less than 1 percent of Microsoft’s shares.

The move means that ValueAct is continuing to grow its hoard of Microsoft shares, even as the company’s share price has risen significantly in recent months. The company’s shares have been riding high after better than expected financial results this quarter, alongside investor goodwill following the appointment of Satya Nadella as Microsoft CEO.

Mason Morfit, ValueAct’s president, took a seat on Microsoft’s board earlier this year as part of an agreement the two companies made in August. It’s unclear what affect Morfit and ValueAct have had on Microsoft so far, though ValueAct CEO Jeffrey Ubben has said in the past that he thinks Microsoft has a future as a cloud services company.

Today’s news, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, comes after filings revealed that Bill Gates is no longer the largest single shareholder of Microsoft stock. That title is now held by former CEO Steve Ballmer, who controlled more than 333 million shares as of the company’s annual proxy filing last fall.

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