Microsoft’s stock gains after Q3 results beat estimates

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) topped revenue and earnings estimates for the third quarter of 2019, giving shares a lift of 3% during aftermarket hours on Wednesday. The consensus estimate was for earnings of $1 per share on revenue of $29.83 billion.

Revenues grew 14% year-over-year to $30.6 billion. Net income rose 19% to $8.8 billion and diluted EPS grew 20% to $1.14.

“Demand for our cloud offerings drove commercial cloud revenue to $9.6 billion this quarter, up 41% year-over-year. We continue to drive growth in revenue and operating income with consistent execution from our sales teams and partners and targeted strategic investments,” stated Amy Hood, EVP and CFO of Microsoft.

Also see: Microsoft Q3 2019 Earnings Conference Call Transcript 

In the Productivity and Business Processes segment, revenue grew 14% to $10.2 billion. LinkedIn revenue rose 27% with record levels of engagement highlighted by LinkedIn sessions growth of 24%. Revenue in Intelligent Cloud increased 22% to $9.7 billion. Azure posted revenue growth of 73%.

Revenue in More Personal Computing rose 8% to $10.7 billion. Gaming revenue grew 5%, driven by Xbox software and services revenue growth of 12%. Xbox Live monthly active users grew 7% to 63 million. Search advertising revenue, excluding traffic acquisition costs, rose 12%.

Last week, Microsoft acquired Express Logic, an embedded software company based in California for an undisclosed amount. Express Logic’s ThreadX real-time operating system will prove beneficial to Microsoft as it expands its capabilities across the Internet of Things space.

Microsoft’s peers Amazon.com (NYSE: AMZN) and Apple (NYSE: AAPL) are scheduled to report their earnings results on April 25 and April 30, respectively.

Listen to on-demand earnings calls and hear how management responds to analysts’ questions