Stronger than expected Microsoft – Revenue of $52.9 billion in the fourth quarter

On the Tuesday after the US stock market closed, Microsoft provided numbers for a rich quarter:

The company’s revenue ended up at $52.9 billion, higher than analysts had expected, according to Bloomberg.

The consensus called for sales of just over $51.1 billion, up from $49.4 billion last year. In after-market dealings, the stake rose five percent.

However, this means that the sales growth rate for the second consecutive quarter is less than ten percent. Revenue growth has been flat in the double digits for each quarter measured on a year-over-year basis since 2017.

The tech giant has also said in several quarterly reports that it expects lower income growth, as both businesses and individuals try to cut costs.

Better than expected running result

Microsoft has different fiscal years, and Tonight’s Quarterly Report applies to the third quarter of the fiscal year—that is, the months from January to March. In these months, the company has invested more than ten billion dollars in Open AI, laid off 10,000 employees, and seen the Bing search engine, integrated with Chat GPT, take some market share from Google.

The company reported operating profit of $22.4 billion, beating analyst estimates of $20.7 billion as well as last year’s result for the same period of $20.3 billion.

Microsoft with $22.6 billion after tax in the previous quarter, up from $20.2 billion after the same period last year.

Income growth is in an important area

Revenue from the Azure cloud service, which investors are closely watching, rose 27 percent from the first quarter of last year, a somewhat subdued growth rate from the fourth quarter of last year. Income from this was also in line with analysts’ expectations.

Licensing income from the sale of the Windows operating system fell 28 percent, in a quarter in which analysis agency Gartner estimated that PC shipments fell 30 percent, according to reports. CNBC.

Microsoft’s share price is up more than 17 percent so far this year, but it’s down about two percent in trading on Tuesday.

“When you look at some of the other big tech stocks, Microsoft is holding up better in the sense that if nothing else, they have negative growth,” says Dan Morgan, portfolio manager at Synovus Trust Co. bloomberg. (conditions)Copyright Dagens Næringsliv AS and/or our suppliers. We’d like you to share our statuses using links that lead directly to our pages. Reproduction or other use of all or part of the Content may be made only with written permission or as permitted by law. For more terms see here.