Microsoft’s (MSFT) fiscal fourth-quarter report suggests the company is backing up its talk, at least as far as its cash-cow Office franchise goes.
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Microsoft Corp. still has a way to go in its shift to cloud services, but that’s nothing the technology giant or its bottom line can’t handle, analysts said Wednesday.
Microsoft has been competing with Amazon, Google and others for control in the cloud service and storage space.
Be Civil – It’s OK to have a difference in opinion but there’s no need to be a jerk. Despite the surge in revenue, Microsoft is still struggling to increase profit in the capital-intensive cloud business.
After Microsoft reported its earnings results, shares climbed during the afterhours trading moving up 4.2 percent to $55.34.
Nadella, well into his third year at the helm, has been reorienting Microsoft’s business around cloud and productivity services to fuel growth as traditional software sales shrink. Both Azure, the company’s cloud computing platform, and its Office 365 units were “surprisingly resilient”, contributing to the quarter’s upside, said the analysts.
Microsoft’s retreat from the smartphone market hurt its device sales significantly.
Including some adjustments, fiscal fourth-quarter revenue was US$22.6 billion (RM90.7 billion), compared with the average analyst estimate for US$22.1 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The company’s operating income was $27.9 billion on a nan-GAAP basis.
Microsoft Corporation is engaged in developing licensing and supporting a range of software products and services.
Microsoft said its search advertising revenue rose 54 per cent from a year ago, helped by the use of Bing, the primary search engine for Windows 10.
The purchase will give Microsoft access to the details of 433 million LinkedIn users, which Microsoft could combine with its Office 365 cloud service to offer its business clients more insight into their customers. That said, the company’s revenue declines still haven’t leveled off, despite the rise in its newer businesses.
Intelligent Cloud revenue grew 7% (up 10% in constant currency) to $6.7 billion.
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Microsoft executives didn’t have much to say on the company’s pending $26.2 billion deal to buy business social networking firm LinkedIn. For the year, revenue from the More Personal Computing segment, which includes Windows, fell 6.3% to $40.46 billion. Surface revenue was up 9% driven by sales of Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book.
