Microsoft Announced Better-Than-Expected Earnings, Led By Cloud Revenue Growth 31%

Microsoft revenue for the fourth quarter of 2022 was $52.7 billion, increased 2%. Cloud computing platform is the biggest business and the most growing segment for Microsoft. Microsoft Azure and other cloud services grow 31% during the fourth quarter of 2022.

Revenue in Productivity and Business Processes was $17.0 billion, increased 7%. Office Commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 7%, the growth has been driven by Office 365 Commercial revenue growth of 11%. Office Consumer products and cloud services revenue decreased 2% and Microsoft 365 Consumer subscribers grew to 63.2 million users.

LinkedIn revenue increased 10%. Dynamics products and cloud services revenue increased 13%. The growth has been driven by Dynamics 365, with revenue growth of 21%

Revenue in Intelligent Cloud was $21.5 billion and increased 18%. Especially, Server products and cloud services revenue increased 20% led by Azure and other cloud services revenue growth of 31%.

Revenue in Personal Computing was $14.2 billion and decreased 19%. Windows OEM revenue decreased 39%. Windows Commercial products and cloud services revenue decreased 3% Xbox content and services revenue decreased. Search and news advertising revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs increased 10%. Devices revenue decreased 39%

Dividend Payout and Share Repurchase

Microsoft paid out $9.7 billion to shareholders in the form of share repurchases and dividends in the second quarter of fiscal year 2023, a decrease of 11% compared to the second quarter of fiscal year 2022.

What does Microsoft do?

Windows Operating System

Microsoft Windows is the oldest among Microsoft’s products, released 37 years ago in 1985.

Microsoft Azure

Azure is the world’s second biggest cloud computing platform. With AWS the biggest, Google the third biggest, and Alibaba the fourth biggest.

Office 365

Office 365 is a bundle pack of Microsoft Office, One Drive, and Microsoft Teams. It is a subscription service. For business basic cost $3 per month and for business cost $8.25 per month.

GitHub

It is a cloud hosting service for software development.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social network for job search.

Bing Search

It is a search engine launched in 2009.