Cloud strength helps Microsoft earnings top Wall Street estimates despite flat revenue
April 25, 2014
Grazed from Newser. Author: Ryan Nakashima.
In Satya Nadella’s first quarterly earnings release as chief executive, Microsoft Corp. on Thursday posted earnings and revenue that beat Wall Street expectations, offering new justification for the CEO’s focus on cloud computing. Factoring out special items from a year ago, revenue in the January-March quarter grew 8 percent.
Nadella, who replaced longtime CEO Steve Ballmer in February, said in a statement that the quarter’s results "demonstrate the strength of our business, as well as the opportunities we see in a mobile-first, cloud-first world." Microsoft’s stock rose $1.09, or 2.7 percent, to $40.95 in after-hours trading after the results were released. That followed a 17-cent gain to $39.86 in the regular session…
"It’s a good first quarter of earnings for Satya out of the box," said analyst Shannon Cross of Cross Research. "This was enough to offset concerns that investors might have had that growth was slowing or the impact Amazon or other competitors might be having on the cloud strategy."…
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