[NEW YORK] Microsoft reported stronger-than-expected quarterly sales and profit growth, suggesting customer demand for cloud services has held steady despite a wave of new tariffs and economic turbulence.
Total revenue in the fiscal third quarter increased 13 per cent to US$70.1 billion, while adjusted profit was US$3.46 a share, the company said on Wednesday (Apr 30). Analysts on average estimated sales of US$68.5 billion and adjusted per-share earnings of US$3.21.
The world’s largest software maker is considered a leader in commercialising artificial intelligence (AI) products, thanks to its close partnership with ChatGPT maker OpenAI. In addition to providing computing infrastructure, Microsoft has launched AI assistants in widely used productivity applications such as Office and Excel.
The Azure cloud unit, which sells computing power and other services, posted a 33 per cent revenue gain in the quarter, beating the Wall Street estimate of 29 per cent. The company said a new cloud commitment from OpenAI helped drive bookings.
Microsoft shares rose about 6 per cent in extended trading after closing at US$395.26 in New York. The company’s stock was down about 6 per cent this year to the Wednesday close as part of a broader market selloff.
Like its peers Amazon.com and Alphabet, Microsoft has raced to construct enough data centres to meet the spiking demand for generative AI training and tools. But in recent months, it has slowed some of these development efforts, leading investors to debate whether this is an indication of financial prudence or lower long-term demand for cloud and AI.
BT in your inbox
Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox.
Third-quarter capital expenditures including leases, an indication of data centre spending, came in at US$21.4 billion. That’s less than the company spent the prior quarter, the first such decline in more than two years.
These investments are meant to fuel growth in the company’s cloud-computing business. The company attributed 16 percentage points of Azure’s third-quarter growth to AI, compared with 13 points in the prior quarter.
Sales in Microsoft’s unit containing business applications grew 10 per cent to US$29.9 billion. That was just ahead of the average analyst estimate of US$29.7 billion.
Microsoft is working to convince customers to upgrade to more expensive tiers of its software to use the latest AI features, including its Copilot assistants. Those upgrades have helped the company generate more revenue per user, investor relations chief Jonathan Neilson said.
The threat of changing US government policy, from tariffs to federal cost-cutting efforts, have rattled business leaders and investors in recent weeks. While tariffs do not impact software makers directly, they can hurt demand from customers and increase costs across the economy.
As a large software company, Microsoft’s “not as subject to all the worries we see in the tech space”, Dan Morgan, senior portfolio manager at Synovus Trust, said. The company “beat on every major metric”.
Microsoft has some direct exposure to hardware businesses through its Xbox gaming console and Surface laptops. The unit containing these products reported a 6 per cent gain to US$13.4 billion in the third quarter, ahead of the average estimate of US$12.7 billion. BLOOMBERG
