Microsoft: quarterly profit beats on strong cloud sales

(CercleFinance.com) - Microsoft shares rose on Thursday after the world's biggest software maker exceeded expectations in most metrics over the past quarter, helped by strong sales of cloud services.


The Seattle-based group said late on Wednesday that net profit came to 8.8 billion dollars, or 1.15 dollar per share, for its fiscal first quarter, versus 6.5 billion dollars, or 85 cents per share, a year ago.

Analysts were only expecting 96 cents per share.

Microsoft's revenue rose an impressive 19% to 29.1 billion, including 8.5 billion dollars of commercial cloud revenue, up 47% year-on-year.

Chief financial officer Amy Hood said that the record results reflected "long-term strategic investments" and "consistent execution" to drive revenue growth and margin expansion.

"She has encouraged investors to think of Microsoft as a growth company and true to this, the top line progress at this scale is impressive, though we continue to monitor the bottom line that matters most," one Wall Street analyst noted.

Investors seemed to share his point of view: Microsoft shares rose 4.5% to 107 dollars in early-morning trading after closing at 102.3 dollars last night, giving the group a market cap of 821.3 billion dollars.

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