The IT giant Microsoft has given investors with information about its business development. The numbers were extremely positive.
Artificial intelligence and cloud services push the shop of the software group Microsoft vigorously. In the past quarter, sales increased by 13 percent to $ 70.1 billion in the past quarter. This clearly exceeded the expectations of analysts. The profit also attracted noticeably.
CFO Amy Hood also promised strong growth of the cloud offers for the current quarter on Wednesday evening.
Tech shares had suffered badly from the customs plans of US President Donald Trump, also because they temporarily raised the interest expectations in the USA. Tech shares react comparatively sensitively to interest. With less than $ 345, the Microsoft course had fallen to the lowest level since autumn 2023. Last summer, the stock had reached a record of $ 468. Most recently, she was just under $ 400 in the main trade. With $ 2.9 trillion market capitalization, Microsoft is the second most valuable listed group worldwide after Apple. The bottom line was that Microsoft had a profit of $ 25.8 billion. That was 18 percent more than a year earlier. The proceeds in the business with the Cloud platform Azure rose by 33 percent, and almost half of the climb went back to artificial intelligence.
Azure growth is an important indicator for analysts for the dynamics in the microsoft business. The experts had expected an increase of over 30 percent on average. On Azure, Microsoft offers computing power, and companies can run their own software online on the platform.
The Azure platform accelerated its growth compared to the previous quarter, analyst Brent Thill praised the US investment bank Jefferies. Above all, the part of the business, which is not AI supported, was positive. The outlook of sales for the fourth quarter of the business was also better than generally thought. The economic environment does not load as much as fears as feared. Profitability and order situation were another plus for the expert.
Like the rival Amazon Web Services and Alphabets Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft put a lot of money into the expansion of data centers for computing power and upgraded them with AI functions.
The concern among many investors is that the companies burn large amounts of money in hard competition for AI functions that they cannot get in again. In the past quarter, the investment expenditure – an indication of expenses for data centers – was $ 21.4 billion at Microsoft. That was less than in the previous quarter and the first decline in over two years.
Jefferie’s goal for Microsoft raises $ 550 – ‘Buy’
The Jefferies analysis house has raised the price target for Microsoft from $ 550 to $ 550 and left the classification to “Buy”. The software company had exceeded expectations in the past quarter by the bank, analyst Brent Thill wrote on Thursday after the number template. An economy weakness does not seem to make itself felt at Microsoft.
In the trade in Nasdaq, the Microsoft share increases by 8.80 percent to $ 430.05.
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