Microsoft's stock was down slightly this morning in early trading despite announcing record revenue after the market closed yesterday, beating Wall Street expectations.

Microsoft earned $5.87 billion in profit on $17.37 billion in sales during the previous quarter. For the full fiscal year that ended June 30, profits grew 23 percent to $23.2 billion on sales that grew 12 percent to $69.9 billion. That's a helluva enviable operating margin.

So why the lack of excitement from investors? 12 percent growth is great and all that, especially in an economy that grew at a quarter that rate, but it doesn't exactly qualify as the type of growth stock (see Apple) that gets Wall Street all hot and bothered. Plus, while Microsoft is going gangbusters on much of the enterprise side of its business, Windows sales—its core monopoly—actually shrank 2 percent on the year.

It almost seems unfair that such an enormously profitable company should have such a stagnant stock, but investors don't reward you for past performance. I mean, there's nothing wrong with being IBM, but Microsoft keeps talking like the growth story it hasn't been for years—at least, not compared to competitors like Google and Apple—and Wall Street has been judging it accordingly. So if you ask me, Microsoft needs to either rethink what it is, or rethink how it's going to get where it thinks it's going.