(Reuters) – Microsoft on Tuesday reported January-March revenue above Wall Street expectations, on the back of growth in its cloud computing business and sales of its Office suite, seeing its title jump 4% in post-closing trading.
First-quarter earnings per share were $2.45, versus a consensus of $2.23 according to Refinitiv data, up 10% year-on-year.
Microsoft released quarterly revenue up 7% to $52.9 billion, while analysts on average had expected $51.02 billion.
While most of its revenue comes from software sales and “cloud” services, the IT group attracted attention this year by announcing a partnership with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, and an increased reliance on intelligence artificial intelligence (AI) for its Bing search engine.
“There is great excitement, and the innovation (…) is apparent in the market, but it is still really too early for this to materialize with magnitude in our quarters,” the director of relations with Reuters told Reuters. investors, Brett Iversen, on the impact of AI on Microsoft’s business.
Azure recorded a growth of 27% over the period January-March, beating the consensus which emerged at +26.6% according to Visible Alpha data, despite according to Brett Iversen of a still delicate macroeconomic environment.
Revenue for the cloud division as a whole came in at $22.1 billion, versus a consensus of $21.85 billion, according to Refinitiv data.
While analysts were pessimistic in their forecasts for the Windows business, which is heavily dependent on PC computer sales which have fallen in recent quarters, the decline in sales in this segment was less significant than expected – 13.3 billion. billion, versus a consensus of $12.19 billion according to Refinitiv data.
The division combining Office and advertising sales on the professional social network LinkedIn recorded a turnover of 17.5 billion dollars, again beating the expectations of analysts who anticipated 16.99 billion dollars according to Refinitiv data.
(Reporting Yuvraj Malik in Bangalore, Stephen Nellis and Jane Lee in San Francisco; Jean Terzian)
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