The tech group can continue to benefit from the consequences of the corona crisis.
(Photo: dpa)
San Francisco Wedbush analyst Dan Ives anticipated positive Microsoft quarterly figures: “Our number check has shown the expected improvements, with a cloud business that shifts up into the next gear.” which “should easily exceed the expectations of the analysts.”
He should be right. The result exceeded not only the analysts’ assumptions, but also those of Microsoft. In the summer, the group forecast sales ranges for its divisions. If you add up the maximums, they would have totaled $ 44 billion in sales.
The actual value landed at 45.2 billion, an increase of 22 percent. For the first time in the company’s history, net earnings in the three-month period exceeded $ 20 billion. The earnings expectations of the analysts per share had leveled off in the run-up to 2.07 dollars, in the end it was 2.71 dollars. After the trading hours, the share climbed by up to two percent.
Microsoft was particularly successful with the cloud business. The Microsoft cloud platform “Azure” is number two in the market behind the Amazon cloud “AWS”. Google also published its quarterly report on Tuesday with an impressive 48 percent increase in the cloud business. With a growth of 50 percent, “Azure” performed significantly better and thus presented the highest growth rate for over a year.
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The Google share fell after the hours, also because YouTube weakened, while Microsoft was able to gain. The next thing expected on Wednesday is the development of Amazon’s “AWS”.
The global shortage of parts is also a problem for Microsoft. Business with its own hardware (“Surface”) and with Windows licenses has therefore lagged far behind demand, according to Microsoft. Nevertheless, the results can also be seen here.
Sales rose in the traditional PC division from 11.85 to 13.3 billion dollars. The introduction of a new version of the Windows operating system should lead to higher sales in the medium term. A price increase has also been announced for the extremely successful Office365 software.
The Xbox game consoles are also in higher demand than Microsoft can supply. The business with Xbox Live, the Internet gaming platform with subscription business, should bring some relief. With a strong line-up of new games, Microsoft boss Satya Nadella is hoping for a record quarter here for Christmas.
In a meeting with analysts, Microsoft’s chief financial officer Amy Hood set the targets for the current quarter. She expects group sales between 50.15 and 51.05 billion dollars. Analysts have so far been closer to $ 49 billion.
Even before the figures were published, analysts such as Brent Thill from Jefferies, J. Derrick Wood from Cowen or Dan Ives from Wedbush had put the share on “Buy” or “Outperform”. Ives, for example, sets the price target at $ 375, as does Thill.
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