Microsoft Posts Record Q1 Profit; Results Trump Street View Driven By Cloud Business

(RTTNews) - Software giant Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) Tuesday reported a strong first-quarter results, driven by over 30% growth in the cloud business. Both the earnings and revenues trumped Street estimates.

Net income for the first quarter was $20.51 billion or $2.71 per share, up from $13.89 billion or $1.82 per share in the same quarter last year. It is for the first time that the company's quarterly profit has topped $20 billion mark. Twenty-six analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of $2.07 per share for the quarter.

Microsoft said its first-quarter revenues grew 22% to $45.32 billion from $37.15 billion last year. Twenty-five analysts had a consensus revenue estimate of $43.97 billion.

One of the primary driving factors for the results was the growth in the cloud business. Due to the pandemic, the entire world shifted to a work-from-home ecosystem, pushing the sale of cloud services for the company.

"We delivered a strong start to the fiscal year with our Microsoft Cloud generating $20.7 billion in revenue for the quarter, up 36% year over year," said Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft.

The revenue from intelligent cloud services increased to $17.0 billion in the quarter, up 31% from last year, driven by Azure and other cloud services revenue growth of 50%.

MSFT closed Tuesday's trading at $310.11, up $1.98 or 0.64%, on the Nasdaq. The stock further gained $2.03 or 0.65% in the after-hours trading.