Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella appears at an event with senior officials and CEOs in the East Room of the White House in Washington on June 22, 2023.
Chris Kleponis | CNP | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Microsoft shares slipped 1% in extended trading on Tuesday after the software maker issued fiscal fourth quarter earnings.
Here’s how the company did:
- Earnings: $2.69 per share, vs. $2.55 per share as expected by Refinitiv.
- Revenue: $56.19 billion, vs. $55.47 billion as expected by Refinitiv.
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Revenue rose 8% year over year in the quarter, which ended on June 30, according to a statement. Net income totaled $20.08 billion, compared with $16.740 billion in the year-ago quarter.
Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud segment contributed $23.99 billion in revenue, up 15% and above the $23.79 billion consensus of analysts surveyed by StreetAccount. The unit comprises the Azure public cloud, SQL Server, Windows Server, Visual Studio, Nuance, GitHub and enterprise services.
Azure revenue grew 26% during the quarter, compared with 27% growth in the previous quarter. Analysts polled by CNBC and by StreetAccount had expected 25% growth from Azure, which competes with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform. Microsoft doesn’t report Azure revenue in dollars. Google parent Alphabet said Tuesday that revenue from its cloud products, which includes Google Workspace productivity apps in addition to Google Cloud Platform, increased by 28%.
Microsoft’s Productivity and Business Processes segment that contains Office productivity software, LinkedIn and Dynamics delivered $18.29 billion in revenue, up 10% and more than the StreetAccount consensus of $18.06 billion.
The company’s More Personal Computing business, which contains the Windows operating system, devices, gaming and search advertising, posted $13.91 billion in revenue. That figure indicates a decline of about 4%, yet it still topped the $13.58 billion StreetAccount consensus.
Sales of Windows licenses to device makers decreased by 12%. Consumers and companies rushed to buy PCs after the onset of Covid, making comparisons difficult for the past year.
Investors are eager for resolution in Microsoft’s arrangement to buy Activision Blizzard for almost $69 billion, which was agreed upon in January 2022. Earlier this month, an appeals court denied the Federal Trade Commission’s motion to stop the transaction. Activision shares have climbed past $92.50, close to the $95 that Microsoft agreed to pay, reflecting optimism that the deal is on track to close.
Notwithstanding the after-hours move, Microsoft shares have gained 44% year to date, while the S&P 500 is up 19%.
The company said its operating expenses rose about 2% in the quarter, partly because of a charge to pay a fine from Ireland’s Data Protection Commission after the authority looked at whether the company’s LinkedIn unit violated the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told employees in May that the company won’t lift salaries this year.
During the quarter, Microsoft built on its broad alliance with OpenAI to capitalize on fresh interest in artificial intelligence, following the November launch of the startup’s ChatGPT chatbot. Microsoft introduced a chatbot powered partly by OpenAI language models to help workers make sense of their employers’ data, and it told developers they’ll be able to build plugins that people can access through ChatGPT, the Bing search engine’s chatbot, and other tools.
Excluding the after-hours move, Microsoft shares have gained 46% year to date, while the S&P 500 is up 19%.
Executives will discuss the results with analysts and issue guidance on a conference call starting at 5:30 p.m. ET.
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
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