REDMOND, Wash. (CNN/Money) - At its day-long schmoozefest with financial analysts Thursday, Microsoft made much of its new products, increased research and development spending and net workforce additions.

But perhaps the most important message it sent to investors regarded a seemingly humdrum change in how it will report its financial results. Behind the numbers is a signal: In a time when investors wish they'd been more diversified, Microsoft itself has diversified its business in a typically powerful fashion.

The shift is subtle. Instead of using broad product lines that all companies use to hide true results from the competition, Microsoft now will report revenue and operating profit for each of its seven business lines.

The changes help Microsoft in a few ways. It enables the company to tell a growth story in that it forecasts double-digit revenue growth for its relatively small units: home and entertainment (think: Xbox), MSN (Internet access and network), server software, wireless software and small-business.

And it continues to isolate the high-margin, slow-growth strength of the two businesses that still make up 68 percent of Microsoft's revenues, the Windows operating system and the desktop applications led by its Office package of programs. (For more on Microsoft's huge operation -- and how it is managing is monstrous cash hoard -- see MONEY Magazine's Microsoft feature from this spring.)

But the shift also highlights just how sound a business Microsoft is running, one that it plans to invest $5.3 billion this fiscal year to improve. The small business unit had $300 million in revenue last year, before the recent addition of the Danish software maker Navision.

Home and entertainment, aided by a burgeoning Xbox gaming business, is a $2.4-billion business, which Microsoft forecasts will have 20-plus percent growth in fiscal 2003, ending next June. Microsoft's so-called mobility software, in which it competes against wireless industry leader Nokia, is a pipsqueak at $60 million dollars. But Microsoft continues to invest heavily in it.

Add up these components and others and you begin to get the picture. Like the great durable companies of the ages, this company has numerous legs on which to stand. It will not grow at its past rates, but it will survive -- and thrive. And that's saying something these days.

"People ask, are you still a growth stock?" says John Connors, the company's low-key chief financial officer, as he shows a chart of Microsoft's performance relative to tech giants like Oracle, Sun and Cisco. "Compared to these guys, yes we are."

RECENTLY BY ADAM LASHINSKY       How to spend $50 billion Avoiding the value trap AOL's cookie jar

Indeed, almost all conversations about Microsoft's stock price turn to relative comparisons, as in, Where else are you going to put your money? For example, given its forecasted operating income growth rate of below 10 percent, Bear Stearns analyst Chris Kwok thinks Microsoft is worth only about 20 times next year's earnings of around $1.90 per share, or $38. Having said that, Kwok assumes Microsoft could continue to support that valuation for several years, while the competition in the software and hardware world may well fall far back.

An interesting side note is Microsoft's moral relativism when it comes to leadership. CEO Steve Ballmer talks a lot about leading the technology industry. But he and Chairman Bill Gates are painfully aware that the industry doesn't particularly want to be led by Microsoft.

As such, even though Ballmer and Gates clearly are sympathetic to the cause of expensing stock options -- that crusade is being fought by Gates's buddy Warren Buffett -- Microsoft won't lead by example because Silicon Valley simply is too against the idea.

Says Ballmer: "If you want to be a responsible leader in your industry you've got to participate in the industry." In other words, if pissing off its partners and customers stands in the way of doing the right thing, so be it.

Adam Lashinsky is a senior writer for Fortune magazine. Send e-mail to Adam at adam_lashinsky@timeinc.com.

Sign up to receive The Bottom Line by e-mail.