The surge in demand for cloud computing services during the pandemic, along with an increase in video gaming and computer purchases by consumers spending more time at home, lifted Microsoft’s financial results ahead of expectations in its latest quarter.
However, the US software maker’s stock price fell back more than 1 per cent in after-market trading on Tuesday as it issued cautious revenue guidance and warned that it continued to face a “headwind” from lower one-off sales of software due to the coronavirus crisis.
Microsoft also hinted that operating profit margins were likely to come under more pressure in the the first half of next year, as it invests heavily in expanding its cloud business while also seeing a fall off in high-margin sales of the Windows operating system for PCs.
Revenue in the latest period jumped by 12 per cent to $37.2bn, or 4 per cent above expectations, while earnings per share, at $1.82, increased by 32 per cent, topping forecasts by 28 cents.
But for the final three months of this year Microsoft estimated it would report revenue of $39.6bn to $40.4bn, or growth of 8 per cent at the midpoint of the range, compared to Wall Street forecasts of $40.4bn. The company is facing a difficult comparison with the previous year, when PC software sales were boosted by the end of support for Windows 7.
Despite the short-term uncertainties, Microsoft executives said the company planned to keep investing heavily in the expectation that demand for the cloud would take off in the coming years.
Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, said businesses moving their applications to the cloud were providing a strong lift that had only been accelerated by the pandemic, which had forced companies to rely less on their on-premise information technology. He predicted that the share of gross domestic product spent on IT would double over the next decade, from a current level of 5 per cent.
He added that the number of daily active users of the Teams service — which combines corporate chat and meetings, and has become an entry point for using Office productivity applications — has climbed to 115m, up from 32m when the pandemic hit.
Meanwhile, Amy Hood, chief financial officer, said strong uptake of Microsoft’s cloud services had given the company confidence in the “consistency and the opportunity in front of us” as more businesses switch away from traditional ways of handling their IT.
Revenue from commercial cloud — the clearest indicator of the performance of Microsoft’s core cloud business — jumped 31 per cent in the quarter, to $15.2bn. Azure, its public cloud platform, registered another slowdown, with revenue climbing 47 per cent in constant currency terms compared with growth of 50 per cent the previous quarter, though this was still ahead of expectations.
Despite that, Microsoft’s operating margin came in slightly ahead of expectations as it held operating cost growth to only 3 per cent in the latest quarter.
The US software company also benefited from pockets of strength in gaming and consumer PCs, thanks to the continued effects of the pandemic, while businesses that were hurt earlier in the year, such as LinkedIn and the Dynamics applications business, had rebounds.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiP2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmZ0LmNvbS9jb250ZW50LzEyNjRkMzI1LWI0NzYtNDQ3OC05YzFjLTNhNTg1NGFjMTcyYtIBP2h0dHBzOi8vYW1wLmZ0LmNvbS9jb250ZW50LzEyNjRkMzI1LWI0NzYtNDQ3OC05YzFjLTNhNTg1NGFjMTcyYg?oc=5
2020-10-27 23:47:00Z
52781148788065
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar