Microsoft Corp. easily topped profit and revenue expectations for its latest quarter, though its shares were moving more than 3% lower in extended trading Tuesday after the company discussed the year ahead. The technology giant has won favor on Wall Street for its positioning in the artificial-intelligence revolution, though Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood said on Tuesday’s earnings call that “even with strong demand and a leadership position,” Microsoft’s
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“growth from our AI services will be gradual.” Microsoft’s AI for its Azure cloud-computing business needs to ramp, and the company is working toward the general availability of its Copilot productivity product.
Microsoft’s AI revenue impacts will thus be weighted toward the second half of the new fiscal year that just began, she continued. Meanwhile, she expects that Microsoft’s capital expenditures will rise sequentially each quarter “as we scale to meet demand signals.” Hood’s commentary came as Microsoft posted fiscal fourth-quarter results Tuesday afternoon that showed a 15% jump in revenue for the company’s cloud-computing segment, which it calls Intelligent Cloud. Revenue for the segment came in at $24.0 billion, while analysts had been anticipating $23.8 billion. The growth rate was 17% on a currency-neutral basis. The company said revenue for Azure and other cloud services was up 26%, or 27% in constant currency. Microsoft’s forecast had been for 26% to 27% in constant-currency Azure sales growth, while the company posted 31% constan …
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