Microsoft reported revenue of $76.44 billion during the quarter, higher than the $73.81 billion expected. Its Earnings Per Share (EPS) of $3.65, is also higher than the $3.37 estimated by analysts.
With this jump, Microsoft also crossed $4 trillion in market capitalisation, joining Nvidia in the exclusive club. Microsoft expects to earn between $74.7 billion to $75.8 billion as revenue during the first quarter of the new fiscal. The mid-point of the range, which comes up to $75.25 billion surpassed consensus estimates of $74.09 billion, though its lower than the figures reported for the current quarter.
Azure, the cloud business, is expected to grow at 37% from last year in constant currency terms, higher than the 34% expected. The Intelligent Cloud unit, which also houses Azure, grew by 6% during the quarter. Azure in itself grew by 39% year-on-year, beating estimates of 34% growth.
Microsoft is also likely to spend $30 billion as capex during the first quarter, taking the annualised run-rate to $120 billion, also higher than street projections of $100 billion.
The company’s Copilot products now has more than 100 million monthly active users and adoption of the Microsoft 365 Copilot led to a higher revenue per user for commercial cloud products.
Microsoft laid-off more than 6,000 people during the quarter and had $1.71 billion recognised as other expense, which included losses on equity method investments such as OpenAI.
As of regular closing on Wednesday, Microsoft’s shares were up 23% on a year-to-date basis.
(With Inputs From Agencies.)
