, noting the cloud jump and a healthy commercial backlog reinforce recent share price gains.Valuation, Momentum and Yield at MicrosoftTrading discussions around Microsoft tend to circle back to three questions: whether the stock is priced fairly, whether momentum favors buyers or sellers, and what income investors get
Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ: MSFT) builds and sells the Windows operating system, Office productivity software, Azure cloud infrastructure and a growing stable of artificial intelligence tools, and it just posted fiscal fourth quarter results that beat Wall Street forecasts, which is why microsoft earnings estimates are suddenly a hot search topic again. Shares climbed about 2% in after hours trading following the report.
For the quarter ended June 30, Microsoft posted revenue of $90 billion, up 18% from a year earlier and comfortably ahead of the roughly $87.6 billion analysts had penciled in. Non GAAP diluted earnings per share landed at $4.74, topping consensus estimates near $4.24. On a GAAP basis, diluted EPS came in at $4.81, up 32% year over year. Operating income rose 18% to $40.6 billion, GAAP net income climbed 31% to $35.8 billion, and non GAAP net income increased 22% to $35.3 billion.
Why Microsoft Earnings Estimates Got Blown Past
Part of the beat traces back to one time items that added $0.27 per diluted share versus the guidance Microsoft gave back in April. A $3.2 billion gain tied to its investment in Anthropic, plus lighter than expected costs from its voluntary retirement program, padded the bottom line. Those gains were partly offset by severance costs and impairment charges in the Xbox unit. Strip out the noise, and Microsoft says it still cleared its own targets for revenue, operating income and EPS.
Cloud remains the engine. CEO Satya Nadella pointed to Azure revenue crossing $100 billion for the first time in a fiscal year and Microsoft 365 Copilot passing 30 million paid seats. CFO Amy Hood said Microsoft Cloud revenue reached $59.3 billion for the quarter, up 27% year over year. IG chief market analyst Chris Beauchamp called the quarter a sign the company is