Microsoft Posts Mixed Q2 Earnings: $21.46B Revenue Misses Expectations, $0.76 EPS Exceeds Estimates

Microsoft announced today its financial results for the second fiscal quarter of 2013, and it was an overall strong showing for the company.

The Redmond, Washington-based software giant posted revenue of $21.46 billion and net income of $6.38 billion, with earnings per share of 77 cents. That’s largely in line with what Wall Street had been expecting, though a bit lower on the revenue side and higher on the earnings side — ahead of today’s financial report, the analyst consensus was that Microsoft would post earnings of 75 cents a share on $21.53 billion in revenue.

Today’s results show a nice gain from Microsoft’s results for the first quarter of fiscal 2013, in which the company posted revenues of $16.01 billion and earnings per share of $0.53.

Here are the results in handy graph form, thanks to TechCrunch graphic designer and illustrator Bryce Durbin:
microsoft-q213

In a statement accompanying the release, Microsoft said that the past holiday season turned out to be the strongest in the company’s history. Additionally, CEO Steve Ballmer was characteristically bullish about the company’s recent performance and future prospects, especially in regards to Windows Phone 8 and the Surface tablet:

“Our big, bold ambition to reimagine Windows as well as launch Surface and Windows Phone 8 has sparked growing enthusiasm with our customers and unprecedented opportunity and creativity with our partners and developers. With new Windows devices, including Surface Pro, and the new Office on the horizon, we’ll continue to drive excitement for the Windows ecosystem and deliver our software through devices and services people love and businesses need.”

Microsoft’s stock price has been climbing over the past two days, apparently in anticipation of strong Q2 results. However, the stock has started to lag a bit in the aftermath of the earnings report: Microsoft’s share price was down 1.5 percent in after-hours trading within the first minutes of the report.

Breaking out the results in terms of company divisions, the Windows Division posted revenue of $5.88 billion, a 24 percent increase year-over-year; the Server & Tools business reported $5.19 billion of revenue, up nine percent year-over-year; the Microsoft Business Division posted $5.69 billion of revenue, a ten percent decrease year-over-year; the Online Services Division reported revenue of $869 million, up eleven percent year-over-year; and the Entertainment and Devices Division posted revenue of $3.77 billion, down eleven percent year-over-year.