Microsoft hits new all-time high ahead of Thursday’s Q4 earnings report

Tech bellwether Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), which has been frequently surpassing its all-time high in recent times, again hit a new all-time ($139.54) high when the market opened today. The bullish momentum is expected to continue as the company is set to report its fourth quarter and full-year 2019 earnings results on Thursday, July 18 after the market close.

On average, analysts expect Microsoft to post earnings of $1.21 per share on revenue of $32.75 billion for Q4, which represents year-over-year growth of 12% in profit and 9% in revenue. Once again cloud is expected to maintain the growth momentum in the company’s largest quarter of the year.

For the fourth quarter, Microsoft had projected Productivity and Business Processes segment revenue to be between $10.55 billion and $10.75 billion, Intelligent Cloud revenue between $10.85 billion and $11.05 billion and More Personal Computing revenue to be between $10.8 billion and $11.1 billion.

In Azure, strong growth is expected in consumption-based business and moderate growth in per-user business given the increasing size of the installed base. Microsoft expects Gaming revenue to decline year-over-year in Q4, driven by the tough comparable in Xbox software and services and the continuation of the hardware trends from Q3.

The Redmond, Washington-based company’s aggressive investment in strategic areas like Cloud thru AI and GitHub, Business Applications through Power Platform and LinkedIn, Microsoft 365 thru Teams, Security, and Surface businesses is likely to pay off for the recently ended quarter and beyond that. Microsoft expects to deliver double-digit revenue and operating income growth in FY20 with stable operating margins.

For the third quarter ended March 30, 2019, Microsoft topped earnings and revenue estimates. The stellar results helped the company to become the third $1 trillion company after Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN). Now, the Satya Nadella-led firm is the only US-listed company with a market cap of more than $1 trillion.

Last week, Cowen initiated the coverage on Microsoft with Outperform rating and a price target of $150, and Wells Fargo maintained its Outperform rating with increasing the price target to $160 from $145.

Also Read: Microsoft teams up with Sony for cloud gaming, artificial intelligence

Microsoft stock, which stayed flat at $138.90 at the end of regular trading hours today, had gained 15% in the last three months and 37% in the year-to-date period.

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