Microsoft Corp shares rose in late trading, reversing an earlier decline, after the software giant gave a forecast that reassured investors the company’s Azure cloud-computing business still has potential to drive growth.
Earlier, Microsoft had reported quarterly sales that topped $50 billion for the first time and profit that exceeded analysts’ estimates, fueled by cloud, gaming and Windows software. Still, Azure revenue decelerated from recent quarters, sending the stock tumbling more than 5%.
Chief executive officer Satya Nadella has turned the company’s Azure business into a solid No. 2 behind Amazon.com Inc. in the market for cloud infrastructure services – computing power and storage delivered via the internet – and has made the unit’s results a closely watched number. Though Azure revenue in the fiscal second quarter, which ended Dec. 31, came in below the 50% in the prior period and 51% the quarter before, demand was actually better than Microsoft had expected, chief financial officer Amy Hood said in an interview.
“We’ve kind of hit the highest peak of growth we’re going to see in a while,” Brent Thill, an analyst at Jefferies LLC, said before the results were released. “You have a theme of decelerating growth and harder comps are coming up.” Other technology stocks including Alphabet and Amazon, whose AWS cloud division is its most profitable, reversed their declines in late trading after Microsoft’s forecast. Microsoft’s guidance should calm nerves for investors in those companies as well, Ives said, noting the outlook will be “big for the tech space in this white knuckle environment.”
In the More Personal Computing division, including Windows, Surface and Xbox, revenue was $17.5 billion. That topped the average $16.7 billion projection.
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