• Microsoft reported its quarterly earnings on Thursday – and posted results that easily surpassed Wall Street estimates.
  • The company’s earnings per share came in at $1.37, beating estimates of $1.21.
  • Microsoft Azure saw its revenue grow 64% from the same period of 2018.

Microsoft reported its quarterly earnings on Thursday after the closing bell, and posted results that easily surpassed Wall Street estimates, reflecting the continued growth of its cloud business.

Before the bell, Microsoft was already the most valuable company in the world, with a valuation of over $1 trillion. At the time of this writing, that seems unlikely to change: The company is up a little over 1% in after-hours trading.

Here’s what it reported:

  • Earnings (adjusted) of $1.37 per share, handily beating estimates of $1.21.
  • Revenue of $33.72 billion, beating the estimate of $32.77. That’s up 12% from the same period of 2018.

Revenue in Microsoft’s productivity-and-business-processes segment, which encompasses the Office business, was $11 billion, up 14% from the same period of 2018. Microsoft’s results show that flagship businesses like Office 365, LinkedIn, and Dynamics all posted significant gains in the quarter – and that there are now 34.8 million subscribers to the consumer version of the Office 365 cloud suite.

Intelligent-cloud revenue was $11.4 billion, up 19% from the year-ago period. Notably, Microsoft Azure, the company's crucial cloud-computing platform, saw its revenue grow 64% from the same period of 2018, though Microsoft doesn't break out specific financial figures for that business. That represents a deceleration from the prior two quarters, when Azure posted growth of 73% and 76%.

More personal computing, which accounts for the beleaguered Windows business, saw its revenue edge up 4% from the same time last year to $11.3 billion. That includes the Windows OEM business, which grew 9%, and the Surface hardware line, which saw revenues go up 14%. However, Microsoft also said that gaming revenue was down 10% in the quarter, with Xbox software and services specifically seeing a 3% dip.

As this was the fourth quarter of Microsoft's fiscal year, it also announced full-year results:

  • Revenue of $125.8 billion, up 14% from last year.
  • Net income of $39.8 billion on a non-adjusted basis, up 137% from the year-ago period.
  • Diluted earnings of $5.06 per share, non-adjusted, up 138% from the year-ago period.

In short: Microsoft is a cloud powerhouse, and, other than a potential bump in Azure growth this quarter, shows no signs of slowing down.

This story is developing. Refresh your browser or click here for updates ...