Microsoft records a 13% year over year growth in Q4 revenue

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) published its quarterly financial results that came in stronger than expected on Wednesday. The earnings report came only a day after the company introduced Customer Voice.

Shares of the company were reported about 2.5% down in after-hours trading on Wednesday. At £162 per share, Microsoft is currently just under 30% up year to date in the stock market after recovering from a low of £106.75 per share in March. Learn more about how do people make money on the stock market.

Microsoft’s Q4 financial results versus analysts’ estimates

According to Refinitiv, experts had forecast the company to print £28.65 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter. Their estimate for earnings per share (EPS) was capped at £1.05 per share. In its report on Wednesday, Microsoft topped both estimates posting a higher £29.85 billion in revenue and £1.15 of earnings per share in Q4.

On a year over year basis, Microsoft noted a 13% growth in its quarterly revenue. The company’s earnings took a one-time pre-tax hit of £353 million that translates to a 3.92 pence per share in the recent quarter as it announced to have closed its physical retail stores.

According to the U.S. tech giant, its Intelligent Cloud unit saw a 17% increase in revenue on an annualised basis to £10.49 billion in the fourth quarter. This segment includes Windows Server, Azure public cloud, GitHub, SQL Server, and enterprise services. Analysts had anticipated a much lower £10.29 billion in revenue from Intelligent Cloud.

Microsoft’s revenue from Azure had jumped 59% in the third quarter. In Q4, the growth moderated to 47% instead. The Productivity and Business Processes segment generated £9.22 billion in revenue in the recent quarter that marks a 6% growth from last year but falls shy of the experts’ forecast of £9.35 billion. The unit includes Dynamics, Office, and LinkedIn.

Microsoft announced multiple acquisitions in Q4

Lastly, revenue came in 14% higher in Microsoft’s More Personal Computing segment at £10.13 billion and was reported stronger than the FactSet consensus of £9.01 billion. This segment includes Surface, Xbox, and Windows.

Microsoft announced multiple acquisitions in the fourth quarter, including Softomotive, Metaswitch, and CyberX. Waves Enterprise also announced to have partnered with Microsoft in a blockchain deal last week. For the first quarter, analysts have estimated £28.18 billion in revenue for Microsoft.

At the time of writing, the American multinational technology company has a market cap of £1.26 trillion and a price to earnings ratio of 35.26.