Microsoft Rides the Cloud to Strong Earnings for Q1

Microsoft has reported its Q1 fiscal (Q3 calendar year) earnings today and the company posted healthy numbers across the board at the top. The company reported revenue of $37.2 billion with a net income of $13.9 billion – an increase of 30%.

Microsoft returned $9.5 billion to shareholders in the form of share repurchases and dividends in the first quarter of the fiscal year 2021, an increase of 21% compared to the first quarter of the fiscal year 2020.

The highlights for the quarter are as follows:

  • Revenue in Productivity and Business Processes was $12.3 billion and increased by 11%.
  • Revenue in Intelligent Cloud was $13.0 billion and increased by 20%.
  • Revenue in More Personal Computing was $11.8 billion.

Overall, it was a very healthy quarter for Microsoft who posted better than expected results with strong growth in several key segments including Office with 45.3 million commercial subscribers, Surface had revenues of $1.5 billion, an increase of 37% year over year, and server products and cloud services revenue increased 22%.

On the gaming side, Microsoft revenue increased 30% as more people turned to gaming for entertainment and LinkedIn revenue increased 16% too.

But not everything was perfect, Windows OEM revenue did decline 5% but that is one of the few misses for the company along with search advertising revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs decreased by 10%

As expected, the massive shift to remote working has played into Microsoft’s strength this quarter and helped generate healthy growth in many of its key segments. While much of the business world is feeling significant pressure because of the pandemic, Microsoft is one of the few company’s who is well-positioned for growth during this period of uncertainty.