Microsoft Q4 23 – 26/07
has seen strong gains so far this year the company is widely tipped to become the next $3trn company after Apple set the bar earlier this year.
The catalyst for these continued gains is set to be AI, with the shares building on the gains that we have seen in the wake of their Q3 numbers and disappointment over the knockbacks being faced with respect to its Activision Blizzard deal, which has been rejected by UK regulators and is currently going through the US courts. Microsoft reported Q3 revenues of $52.9bn, above estimates of $51bn, with commercial cloud revenue coming in at $28.5bn. Profits also came in ahead of expectations at $18.3bn or $2.45c a share. All business areas beat expectations, intelligent cloud revenue came in at $22.1bn, a rise of 16%, and subscription products revenues rose 11% to $17.5bn.
Personal computing revenue was the only area of decline, falling 9% to $13.3bn, it still comfortably came in above consensus, although Windows OEM and devices revenue saw a sharp decrease of 28% and 30% respectively. What this tells us is that consumers and businesses have continued to feel the squeeze in terms of new hardware, but that the online business appears to be slowdown-proof for now. Q4 revenues are expected to come in at $55.45bn and profits of $2.56c a share.
