The technology giant delivers weaker than expected on both the top and bottom lines.
Updated less than 10 minutes ago
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Microsoft had sales of $51.9 billion in the quarter, and ended with an operating profit of $20.5 billion. This is revealed in the company’s quarterly report, which was presented shortly after closing time on Wall Street.
The result ended at 16.7 billion dollars, an increase of two percent from the previous year. Per share, the result ended at $2.23.
– In a dynamic environment, we saw strong demand, took shares and increased the customers’ relationship with our cloud platform, says CFO Amy Hood in a comment.
Revenue was previously expected to be $52.45 billion, with earnings per share of $2.29, according to estimates obtained by Bloomberg.
45 minutes after the release of the figures, the Microsoft share is down 0.16 percent.
Microsoft has inconsistent fiscal years, and this is its fourth and final fiscal quarter in fiscal year 2022. Microsoft’s fourth fiscal quarter ran from April 1 to June 30.
– When we now start a new financial year, we are still committed to balancing operations with continued investments in strategic key areas to drive future growth, says Hood.
Affected by strong dollar
At the beginning of June, Microsoft adjusted its forecasts for the fourth financial quarter, due to the fact that the strong dollar exchange rate makes the business outside the US less profitable. At the time, the company envisioned that the result would be $0.25 per share lower than previously estimated due to the dollar exchange rate.
The report states that revenues were 595 million dollars weaker in the quarter due to the strong dollar. This contributed to the result per share being 0.04 dollars lower.
On top of that, the demand for computers has fallen sharply recently. In the period from April to June, deliveries fell by 12.6 per cent, according to analysis agency Garner.
It is the biggest decline in almost a decade, writes Wall Street Journal who first discussed the analysis.
Microsoft writes that a production stoppage in China in May and a weaker PC market negatively affected revenue by $300 million related to Windows OEM, the division that supplies operating systems to computers. Windows OEM had a revenue drop of two percent in the quarter.
Growth in the cloud
Revenues for the company’s so-called “intelligent” cloud products increased by 20 percent in the quarter to 20.9 billion dollars. This is slightly below analysts’ expectations of 21.07 billion.
Server products and cloud services increased by 22 percent driven by revenue growth of 40 percent for Azure and other cloud services.
The technology giant also states that the decision to scale back operations in Russia has contributed to a cost of 126 million dollars in the quarter.
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