Microsoft beats estimates in fiscal Q2

Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ: MSFT) is trading up in extended hours on Tuesday after reporting market-beating results for its second financial quarter.

Azure remained resilient in the second quarter

The stock is being rewarded also on solid growth in Azure and other cloud services.

Microsoft saw a 30% growth on a year-over-year basis in its cloud-computing platform versus 27.5% expected. Amy Hood – its chief of finance said in a press release today:

$MSFT that currently pays a dividend yield of 0.73% has climbed a whopping 70% over the past 52-weeks.

Microsoft Q2 earnings snapshot

• Earned $21.87 billion versus the year-ago $16.43 billion
• Per-share earnings also climbed from $2.20 to $2.93
• Overall revenue jumped 17% year-on-year to $62.02 billion
• Consensus was $2.78 a share on $61.12 billion in revenue

The tech behemoth announced custom AI chips (find out more) and launched an artificial intelligence enabled Copilot add-on to Microsoft 365 in Q2. CEO Nadella also said today:

What else was noteworthy in the earnings print?

Other notable figures in the earnings report include a 13% increase in Productivity and Business Processes revenue, 19% in More Personal Computing and a 20% increase in Intelligent Cloud at large – all ahead of Street estimates.

Microsoft Corp will issue guidance for the future on its earnings call that you can tune into on this link.

The Nasdaq-listed firm completed its biggest ever acquisition of Activision Blizzard in the second quarter as well. Wall Street currently has a consensus “buy” rating on $MSFT.