Microsoft shares rose in after-hours trading after the company reported over $43 billion USD (about $55 billion CAD) in sales and over $15 billion USD (roughly $19.07 billion CAD) in profit from its holiday quarter.
The Redmond, Washington-based software giant reported its fiscal second-quarter earnings on January 26th, which broke several records for the company. The $43 billion in quarterly sales is a first, and the company’s stock hit a closing high of $232.33 USD (about $295.30 CAD).
Microsoft’s sales earnings beat expectations by about $3 billion USD. Last quarter, the company posted $36.9 billion USD in sales.
Azure is garnering the most excitement among analysts as Microsoft reports it grew 50 percent in the second quarter. Azure competes with other cloud computing titans like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google. Unlike those companies, however, Microsoft doesn’t break out the financial performance of Azure. Microsoft reported its ‘intelligent cloud’ segment sales grew to $14.6 billion USD (about $18.6 billion CAD) from $11.87 billion USD a year ago.
Microsoft’s ‘personal computing’ segment, which includes Surface and Xbox, grew to $15.12 billion USD ($19.22 billion CAD) from $13.21 billion USD ($16.8 billion CAD) at the same time last year. Specifically, Microsoft said Xbox revenue grew 40 percent while sales of Surface increased three percent. The massive growth of Xbox likely comes from the launch of the new Xbox Series X and Series S consoles during the holiday season.
Finally, Microsoft’s ‘productivity and business services’ segment, which includes software assets such as Office and LinkedIn, reported revenue of $13.35 billion USD (nearly $17 billion CAD), up from $11.83 billion USD ($15.04 billion CAD) a year ago.
Source: MarketWatch
