December 1999, it hit a high of $59.97.
As recently as November 2016, it was still below that line. Between mid January 2000 and September 2016, it didn't once cross above $59.97 in all of those years in-between.
Go back to as recently as August 2015 and you could find it under $40 still. It was $28 as recently as April 2013.
Even if you didn't want to look up specific date prices for the ticker, a 30 second check on its long-term stock chart will reveal my statement was correct. Slightly more than 15 years of stagnation in fact.
Inflation adjusted, it went down considerably over that time. That's not accounting for their share buybacks and dividends, which if you're lucky might have off-set 15 years of inflation.
Your attempt to claim I was wrong, consists of stating they generated a 10% return over seven years. Even if I were wrong about what I said (fortunately stock quotes are easy to check), that's comical. Go ahead and post what the annual return for those seven years was, under your 10% premise. Then find me an investor that wouldn't consider that stagnation. And that's the idealized scenario, the actual scenario is that the stock proceeded to consistently generate mediocre returns (or worse) between the post dotcom bubble era all the way into 2013.
The point of noting Microsoft's 15 plus years of stagnation in the market, is that their future returns were pulled forward. That's exactly what happened and investors suffered accordingly.
But, yes it has generally under-performed compared to the S&P 500 until recently.
which is what happened to Microsoft, stagnating its stock for ~15 years
Microsoft stock ticker - https://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:MSFT
The longest "stagnant" period is directly after the dotcom bust and up to 2007. In that period the stock appreciated by ~10%. Over the following decade it appreciated by ~150%. Not quite the dramatic hockeystick growth curve startup folk like to see, but pretty reasonable for a company already 30 years old at that point. Either way, the quote above has no basis in reality.