A plain-English look at Microsoft's revenue, profit, and market value, and what those figures reveal about the company today.
A Software Empire Built Over Decades
Few companies have shaped the way people work and play computers quite like Microsoft. Founded in 1975 and headquartered in Redmond, Washington, the company went public in March 1986 and has spent the decades since expanding far beyond its original operating system roots.
Three Businesses Under One Roof
Today Microsoft organizes itself into three roughly equal segments. Productivity and business processes covers the familiar Office suite, Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint, Skype, LinkedIn, and Dynamics. Intelligence cloud houses Azure along with Windows Server and SQL Server, while more personal computing includes Windows Client, Xbox, Bing, display advertising, and Surface devices.
What the Revenue Figures Show
In fiscal year 2025, Microsoft reported revenue of $281.7 billion. That figure represents the total money the company brought in from selling software licenses, cloud services, devices, and advertising across all three segments combined.
A Decade of Growth
Revenue climbed 68% between fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2025, a pace that reflects sustained demand across cloud computing, productivity tools, and personal computing products alike. Growth of that scale, sustained over four years, is notable for a company already operating at this size.
Profitability at a Glance
Microsoft turned a net income of $101.8 billion in fiscal 2025, meaning more than a third of every dollar in revenue ultimately became profit. The company's net margin stood at 36.1%, while its gross margin — the share of revenue left after direct costs of producing goods and services — came in at 68.8%.
Why Margins Matter
High gross and net margins like these typically signal a business with strong pricing power and relatively low costs tied to each additional sale, which is common in software where the marginal cost of serving one more customer is often small.
Balance Sheet Size
Microsoft's total assets add up to $619.0 billion, a figure that reflects everything the company owns, from cash and investments to data centers, equipment, and other holdings built up over decades of operation.
How the Market Values Microsoft
With a market capitalization of $3.1 trillion, Microsoft ranks among the most valuable publicly traded companies in the world. Shares recently traded at $385.10, though that price is delayed by 15 minutes and shifts constantly with market activity.
Reading the P/E Ratio
The stock carries a price-to-earnings ratio of 28.2, a common way investors compare how a company's share price relates to its per-share profits. Microsoft is also trading 29% below its 52-week high, a reminder that even large, established companies see meaningful swings in their stock price over a year.
A Modest Dividend
Microsoft pays a dividend yielding about 0.95% annually, a relatively small cash return to shareholders compared to some other large companies, though not unusual for a firm that reinvests heavily in its cloud and software businesses.
The Workforce Behind the Numbers
All of this activity runs through a workforce of approximately 228,000 employees, spread across engineering, sales, support, and operations worldwide, supporting a software business that touches consumers and enterprises alike.
The Bigger Picture
Taken together, these figures describe a mature, highly profitable software company generating tens of billions of dollars in annual profit while continuing to grow its top line at a substantial clip. This article is factual reporting drawn from public filings and market data, not investment advice.
