Software giant Microsoft has seen an increase in revenue driven by its Azure cloud computing services.
Yesterday, the company announced its financial results for the quarter ended 30 September, compared to the corresponding period of last fiscal year.
Microsoft posted revenue of $37.2 billion, up 12%; operating income was $15.9 billion, an increase of 25%; net income was $13.9 billion, up 30%; and diluted earnings per share was $1.82 and increased 32%.
“The next decade of economic performance for every business will be defined by the speed of their digital transformation,” says Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft. “We are innovating across our full modern tech stack to help our customers in every industry improve time to value, increase agility and reduce costs.”
“Demand for our cloud offerings drove a strong start to the fiscal year with our commercial cloud revenue generating $15.2 billion, up 31% year-over-year,” says Amy Hood, executive vice-president and chief financial officer of Microsoft. “We continue to invest against the significant opportunity ahead of us to drive long-term growth.”
Among the other highlights, Microsoft’s revenue in productivity and business processes was $12.3 billion and increased 11%.
The company says Office commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 9%, driven by Office 365 commercial revenue growth of 21% (up 20% in constant currency).
It notes Office consumer products and cloud services revenue increased 13% and Microsoft 365 consumer subscribers increased to 45.3 million.
LinkedIn revenue increased 16%, while Dynamics products and cloud services revenue increased 19% (up 18% in constant currency) driven by Dynamics 365 revenue growth of 38% (up 37% in constant currency).
Revenue in Intelligent Cloud was $13 billion and increased 20% (up 19% in constant currency), says Microsoft, adding that server products and cloud services revenue increased 22% (up 21% in constant currency) driven by Azure revenue growth of 48% (up 47% in constant currency).
Microsoft returned $9.5 billion to shareholders in the form of share repurchases and dividends in the first quarter of fiscal year 2021, an increase of 21% compared to the first quarter of fiscal year 2020.
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