Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) announced better-than-expected fiscal fourth-quarter earnings, reporting a 10% jump in profit thanks to its ever-growing cloud business.
The tech giant reported earnings of US$1.13 per share on revenue of US$30.09bn compared with US$1.06 EPS on revenue of US$25.6bn in the previous year’s fourth quarter.
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The Washington-based company beat Wall Street estimates of US$1.08 EPS on revenue of $29.22bn.
Its full year revenue increased 14% to US$110.4bn compared with US$96.57bn in the previous fiscal year.
“Our early investments in the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge are paying off, and we will continue to expand our reach in large and growing markets with differentiated innovation,” said CEO Satya Nadella in a release.
For the first quarter of fiscal 2019, the company expects revenue of TKTK versus analyst estimates of US$27.38bn.
The company also recently acquired popular coding platform GitHub in a US$7.5bn stock deal.
Analysts weigh in on the cloud
KeyBanc Capital Markets analysts expected the Commercial Cloud segment to produce US$6.55bn in revenue, according to a note shared by CNBC.
The company beat the Keybanc estimate, reporting US$6.9bn in commercial cloud revenue.
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The Keybanc analysts predicted that Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing service, would contribute US$2.05bn to the commercial segment with 80% year-over-year growth.
Analysts at Raymond James and Stifel also forecast growth of 80% while Credit Suisse analysts saw growth as high as 84%.
While Microsoft did not disclose the exact dollar amount, it surpassed all of the above estimates, reporting an 89% increase in Azure revenue.
Shares of the company were up slightly at US$104.91 in Thursday after-hours trading.
On Froday's regular session, they gained 2.78% to US$107.30.