The US company Microsoft Corp. increased its net profit by 31 per cent and its revenue by 18 per cent in the fourth financial quarter, thanks in particular to strong growth in the cloud services segment.
According to the company’s press release, net profit for the quarter ending 30 June stood at $35.77 billion, compared with $27.23 billion for the same period the previous year. Earnings per share rose to $4.81 from $3.65.
Earnings excluding one-off items stood at $4.74 per share.
Microsoft’s quarterly revenue rose to $90 billion from $76.44 billion a year earlier.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet had forecast, on average, adjusted earnings of $4.24 per share on revenue of $87.62 billion.
Microsoft’s total cloud services revenue rose by 27% last quarter to $59.3 billion.
Revenue from the Intelligent Cloud division rose by 32 per cent (to $39.31 billion), with revenue from Azure and other cloud services increasing by 43 per cent.
The Productivity and Business Processes division (which develops, amongst other things, the Office suite) increased its revenue by 14 per cent to $37.85 billion. This division also includes the social network LinkedIn, whose revenue grew by 12 per cent.
Revenue from the More Personal Computing division (the Windows operating system, Xbox gaming consoles and Surface devices) fell by 4 per cent to $12.9 billion. Revenue from the sale of Windows licences fell by 7 per cent, whilst revenue from Xbox content and services decreased by 10 per cent.
For the full financial year, Microsoft’s net profit rose by 31 per cent to $133.7 billion, whilst revenue increased by 18 per cent to $331.84 billion. Annual revenue from cloud services exceeded $100 billion for the first time.
In the last quarter, the company returned $10.2 billion to shareholders through share buy-backs and dividend payments.
Microsoft’s shares rose by 8.8 per cent in after-hours trading on Wednesday.