Microsoft's quarterly profits skyrocket on cloud services

Thu 25 Oct 2018 – 06:07

[SAN FRANCISCO] Microsoft announced Wednesday that its earnings for the quarter just ended have skyrocketed thanks to revenue from Internet cloud hosted services and its career-focused LinkedIn social network.

Microsoft reported net profit of $ 8.8 billion on revenue of $ 29.1 billion for the quarter ended September 30, up 34% and 19% respectively from the same period of the year former.

The shares of the technology giant based in Redmond, Washington state, rose 4.75% to reach 107.18 USD after the release of financial results for the first quarter of its fiscal year.

"We have made a good start to fiscal year 2019, the result of our innovation and the trust that customers place in us to fuel their digital transformation," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement.

"We are excited to help our customers develop the digital capabilities they need to thrive and grow."

Mr. Nadella led a transformation at Microsoft of a company specialized in software installed on residential and professional machines to earn money from services hosted on the Internet and available from a wide range of devices , whatever their creator.

"Our record results for the first quarter reflect our commitment to long-term strategic investments and consistent execution to drive revenue growth and margin expansion." exploitation, "said Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood.

"We are seeing continued demand for our cloud computing offerings, as evidenced by our US $ 8.5 billion commercial cloud business figure, up 47% year-on-year."

Productivity and business process investments reached $ 9.8 billion, including strong growth in cloud-based office productivity products for consumers and businesses, according to Microsoft.

LinkedIn revenue increased 33% in the quarter as the career-focused networking service delivered a record level of user engagement.

Microsoft's cloud platform, Azure, which provides computing and storage for businesses in online datacenters, has seen revenues increase by 76 percent.

Azure is part of Microsoft's "Intelligent Cloud" division which, on the whole, reported revenue up 24 percent to $ 8.6 billion.

Microsoft, maker of Xbox consoles, also saw its revenue from hardware, software and gaming services jump by 44%.

The company said it returned $ 6.1 billion to shareholders during the quarter in the form of dividends or share buybacks.

AFP