Microsoft profits soar on back of cloud

Microsoft has unveiled it earnings for the quarter ending June 30 and it has certainly given investors something to smile about.

Revenues for the fourth quarter stood at $33.7 billion, a year-on-year increase of 12%, while net income increased by 49% at $13.2 billion. For the full year, revenues totalled $125.8 billion while net income was $39.2 billion, a 137% increase on the previous year. Investors certainly seemed happy with the results, with Microsoft’s share price increasing 3.4% in pre-market trading.

“It was a record fiscal year for Microsoft, a result of our deep partnerships with leading companies in every industry,” said CEO Satya Nadella.

“Every day we work alongside our customers to help them build their own digital capability – innovating with them, creating new businesses with them, and earning their trust. This commitment to our customers’ success is resulting in larger, multi-year commercial cloud agreements and growing momentum across every layer of our technology stack.”

With Nadella at the helm and cloud computing driving momentum, Microsoft has reaffirmed itself as the most valuable company on the planet, with market capitalisation now standing at $1.05 trillion.

Although the cloud business segment will steal the headlines, the More Personal Computing unit, the legacy shunned child of the Microsoft family, drove year-on-year growth of 4% for the final three months of the year.

Looking at the growth segments of the business, Productivity and Business Processes, featured the LinkedIn and Office products, bolstered revenues by $11 billion, a 14% year-on-year increase. The Intelligent Cloud unit brought grew 19% accounting for $11.4 billion.

There might have been some mixed headlines across the last couple of days, Teams overtaking slack was balanced by the Office 365 ban in schools in Germany, but Nadella and his cronies will certainly be sleeping comfortably.