Microsoft said revenue and adjusted earnings per share for the third quarter ended March 31 were $41.7 billion and $1.95 per share.
Microsoft’s Azure cloud service is closing ground on market-share leader Amazon Web Services (AWS), and it is doubling down on productivity software used by businesses worldwide.
Sales for Microsoft’s commercial cloud – which contains server infrastructure such as Azure along with cloud-based versions of its Office software – was up 33 percent at $17.7 billion.
Sales for Dynamics 365, which competes directly with Salesforce.com, rose 45 percent and the business version of Office 365 added 15 percent more users.
“That’s the fourth consecutive quarter of 15 percent seat growth on a very large base,” Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood said of the Office 365 results for commercial customers.
Microsoft has continued to double down on cloud-base software and said earlier this month it would buy artificial intelligence software firm Nuance Communications for $16 billion, excluding net debt, to bolster its healthcare business.
Microsoft said Azure, its closely watched cloud computing business that competes with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud, grew 50 percent in the quarter.
Sales at Microsoft’s intelligent cloud unit that contains Azure were $15.1 billion.
Microsoft Teams has 145 million daily users, up from 115 million in October, Microsoft said. Sales for Microsoft’s productivity software unit, which includes Office and Teams, were $13.6 billion.
Sales for its LinkedIn social network were up 23 percent, as revenue continued to recover from a sharp decline in job listings and hiring at the onset of the pandemic.
Microsoft’s personal computing unit, which contains its Windows operating system and Xbox gaming console, had $13.0 billion in sales.
Sales of Windows to PC makers were up 10 percent, compared to a 1 percent rise the quarter earlier.
Microsoft forecast fiscal fourth-quarter productivity segment revenue with a midpoint of $13.93 billion. Its sales forecasts for its intelligent cloud and personal computing businesses had midpoints of $16.32 billion and $13.80 billion, respectively.
