Microsoft Crushes Revenue & Guidance Expectations

And the company posted revenues of nearly USD37 billion for the quarter at $1.51 per share

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Published: February 21, 2020

Ian Taylor Editor

Ian Taylor

Editor

Beating analyst expectations across the board, Microsoft stock continues to rise, following the company’s fiscal second-quarter report, along with better-than-expected guidance reports for the coming quarter. Satya Nadella, Chief Executive Officer, Microsoft, said in a statement:

“We are innovating across every layer of our differentiated technology stack and leading in key secular areas that are critical to our customers’ success”

The collaboration giant, in every way, shape, and form, surpassed earnings, revenue, as well as revenue forecasts for the current quarter. Microsoft’s Finance Chief, Amy Hood said it is because of the “Strong execution of our sales teams and partners who drove commercial cloud revenue to $12.5 billion, up 39 percent year-over-year. She added, the company expects to make between $34.1 billion and $34.9 billion during the fiscal third quarter.

Azure Cloud Services sees Continued Growth

Much of Microsoft’s success comes from Azure, its cloud computing service and a direct competitor of Amazon’s AWS offering. The service is up 62 percent, Microsoft reported. Azure’s growth rate did slow down from last year. This time last year, Azure was at 76 percent. The key to Microsoft’s win here is that the 62 percent growth it saw, still beat analysts’ predictions of 58 percent.

All this has Microsoft’s enterprise sector witnessing record-breaking profit margins and investor confidence. Diving into the numbers, Microsoft’s earned $1.51 per share, excluding certain items, vs. $1.32 per share as expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv. Azure notably won Micorosft a $10 billion deal scoring a contract with the Pentagon over Amazon Web Services back in October 2019.

Productivity and Revenue

Another key area of business for Microsoft is productivity. This includes Microsoft Office, LinkedIn, and Dynamics. Productivity earned $11.83 billion in revenue, which is up 17 percent and again higher than analysts predicted ($11.42 billion).

In terms of revenue, Microsoft made $36.91 billion, vs. the $35.68 billion analysts anticipated, also according to Refinitiv. Year-over-year, Microsoft said, it experienced a 14 percent rate of growth for the quarter that ended December 31, 2019.

If you’re like me, you want to keep up with all things Microsoft, so here are some other updates you may have missed. On its quest to improve the workplace and personal productivity, Microsoft is working on a new tool for organizational purposes that might be a part of Outlook sometime in the future.

The feature would allow you to access calendars, appointments, emails, files, documents, etc., from a single user interface. ‘Outlook Spaces’ will leverage artificial intelligence to assist in the process, MSPoweruser reported. More information to come on ‘Outlook Spaces’ as we learn more.

New Microsoft Teams Features

Back in January, UC Today Publisher, Rob Scott reported on seven new Teams Features you may have missed including a walkie talkie, new task experiences in Teams, off-shift controls, identity/access capabilities, as well as SMS sign-in.

Microsoft also announced a shared device sign out feature, delegated user management, and inbound provisioning from SAP success factors to Azure AD. Check out the full UC Today podcast, which features Microsoft MVP, Tom Arbuthnot, as Rob Scott’s expert guest.

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