Microsoft Exceeds Sales, Profit Estimates on Cloud Gains
- Azure revenue almost doubles; Office 365 sales gain 47 percent
- Cloud margins widen as data-center investments pay off
Microsoft Beats Estimates Powered by Cloud Gains
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Microsoft Corp.’s second-quarter sales and profit exceeded analysts’ projections, bolstered by rising customer sign-ups for cloud-based services and a stabilizing personal-computer market.
Profit excluding certain items, such as a few weeks of results from newly acquired LinkedIn Corp., was 84 cents a share on adjusted sales of $25.8 billion, the software maker said Thursday in a statement. Analysts on average had estimated profit would be 79 cents on revenue of $25.3 billion in the period ended Dec. 31, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.