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Windows Central
Windows Central
Technology
Jez Corden

Microsoft shares grow on FY25 Q3 earnings, beating expectations with a 13% increase year-over-year, driven by cloud, gaming, and AI

Microsoft stocks chartting up.

Yesterday evening Microsoft posted its FY25 Q3 results, and it was pretty much a clean slate of growth across the board. Microsoft's shares rose on the news, which grew 1.2+ points in after hours trading, likely to grow further when the markets open fully later today.

"We delivered a strong quarter with Microsoft Cloud revenue of $42.4 billion, up 20% year-over-year," CEO Satya Nadella said, "driven by continued demand for our differentiated offerings."

  • Microsoft's revenue hit $70.1 billion in revenue, 13% up year-over-year, with an operating income of $32 billion and a net income of $25.8 billion.
  • Earnings per share hit $3.46, beating Wall Street estimates.
  • Microsoft's Productivity and Businesses revenue grew 10%, driven by Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365.
  • Intelligent Cloud, which includes Azure, grew by a massive 21%, with Azure alone growing 33% year-over-year.
  • More Personal Computing revenue, which includes Windows, rose 6%.
  • Xbox and gaming grew by 6% overall, with hardware down 6% and content and services growing 8%. PC Game Pass grew by 45% year over year, and Xbox Cloud Gaming hit 150 million hours streamed for the quarter, up 10 million.
  • Microsoft returned $9.7 billion to shareholders through dividends and stock buybacks.

Microsoft was keen to emphasize that global tariffs and geopolitical issues threaten economic certainty may undermine its future profitability in the near term, but remained optimistic on AI and cloud services as key drivers of growth. Microsoft also mentioned opportunities around its quantum computing efforts, fostered by the Majorana-1 breakthrough.

Microsoft also hailed boosted engagement with services like Copilot and Bing, noting that Copilot usage grew 35% quarter over quarter, with Copilot on Microsoft 365 servicing "100 million" users. Bing engagement also increased by 22% apparently, too.

Unfortunately, Microsoft made no mention of Surface itself in this earnings report, although it is thought that new Surface devices under the Copilot+ range are just around the corner.

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