Microsoft Shares Dip as Quarterly Cloud Revenue Misses Expectations
Shares of Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) dipped following the release of the company’s results for its fourth fiscal quarter of 2024, with intelligent cloud revenue falling short of market expectations.
Microsoft reported diluted earnings per share of US$2.95 on revenue of US$64.7 billion. These figures slightly surpassed Wall Street’s expectations of US$2.94 in diluted earnings per share and US$64.5 billion in revenue.
During the same period last year, diluted earnings per share were US$2.69, with revenue of US$56.2 billion.
Microsoft’s overall cloud revenue aligned with forecasts, hitting US$36.8 billion. However, its intelligent cloud revenue, inclusive of Azure services, fell short of the anticipated US$28.7 billion, only tallying US$28.5 billion.
This miss on intelligent cloud revenue was a critical factor in the market’s response. Microsoft finished at US$422.92 on Tuesday (July 30), then released its results after the market closed. Shares opened on Wednesday (July 31) at US$420.42, but fell as low as US$414.61 later that day — a drop of close to 2 percent from the previous day.
Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO, emphasized Microsoft’s focus on artificial intelligence (AI) moving forward.
‘Our strong performance this fiscal year speaks both to our innovation and to the trust customers continue to place in Microsoft,’ Nadella said in Tuesday’s press release. ‘As a platform company, we are focused on meeting the mission-critical needs of our customers across our at-scale platforms today, while also ensuring we lead the AI era.’
Amy Hood, executive vice president and CFO, highlighted the growth in overall cloud revenue.
‘We closed out our fiscal year with a solid quarter, highlighted by record bookings and Microsoft Cloud quarterly revenue of $36.8 billion, up 21% year-over-year,’ she commented.
Power outage impacts Microsoft services
Microsoft’s results came out the same day that a power outage affected products like Outlook.
The outage, which lasted nearly 10 hours, was confirmed to have been triggered by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) cyberattack that overwhelmed the firm’s DDoS protection mechanisms.
The incident affected several Microsoft services, including Microsoft 365 products and Azure, disrupting operations for numerous users and businesses globally. Services such as Azure App Services, Application Insights and the Azure portal experienced intermittent errors, timeouts and latency spikes.
Securities Disclosure: I, Giann Liguid, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.