Microsoft’s net income up 38% to reach $11.6bn, stock up

Redmond (Washington State), Jan 30 (IANS) Riding once again on its Azure Cloud and Office 365 businesses, Microsoft reported $36.9 billion in revenue for its second quarter that ended on December 31, a growth of 14 per cent (year-on-year).

Net income, meanwhile, jumped 38 per cent to reach $11.6 billion. Microsoft stock moved 4 per cent up in extended trading over stronger-than-expected fiscal second-quarter results and revenue guidance for the next quarter.

“We are innovating across every layer of our differentiated technology stack and leading in key secular areas that are critical to our customers’ success,” said Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO.

“Along with our expanding opportunity, we are working to ensure the technology we build is inclusive, trusted and creates a more sustainable world, so every person and every organisation can benefit,” Nadella said in a statement late Wednesday.

Microsoft beat expectations for earnings and revenue, as well as its revenue forecast for the current quarter.

Microsoft returned $8.5 billion to shareholders in the form of share repurchases and dividends in the second quarter of fiscal year 2020.

“Strong execution from our sales teams and partners drove Commercial Cloud revenue to $12.5 billion, up 39 per cent year over year,” said Amy Hood, executive vice president and CFO, Microsoft.

Revenue in Intelligent Cloud was $11.9 billion and increased 27 per cent.

Server products and cloud services revenue increased 30 per cent driven by Azure revenue growth of a massive 62 per cent.

Revenue in Productivity and Business Processes was $11.8 billion and increased 17 per cent, said the company.

Office Commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 16 per cent, driven by Office 365 Commercial revenue growth of 27 per cent.

Office Consumer products and cloud services revenue increased 19 per cent, with continued growth in Office 365 Consumer subscribers to 37.2 million globally.

LinkedIn revenue increased 24 per cent .

The company reported $13.2 billion in revenue for personal computing.

Windows OEM revenue increased 18 per cent, Windows commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 25 per cent and Surface laptop revenue increased 6 per cent.

Search advertising revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs increased 6 per cent.

Only vertical that saw sales down was gaming as Xbox content and services revenue decreased 11 per cent.