Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT), a pioneer in software development and cloud computing, released financial third-quarter results that were above Wall Street analysts’ expectations. The announcement boosted the company’s stock, which jumped about 5% on the day the quarter’s results were released. MSFT was trading at $289.63 on April 28.
Microsoft (MSFT) announced profits per share of $2.22 in the third quarter, up 9% year over year and slightly over Wall Street expectations. The company’s sales increased by 18 percent year over year to $49.36 billion, above analysts’ estimates.
A rise in commercial orders, as well as high demand for cloud computing, fueled revenue growth, according to management. In the third quarter, these two top destinations climbed by 28% and 32%, respectively. The Intelligent Cloud sector, which includes the famous Azure cloud computing service, had a 26 percent gain in revenue to $19.1 billion in the quarter.
It’s worth noting that MSFT is one of the primary benefactors of digital transformation and the shift to cloud computing. Along with Amazon’s AWS and Alphabet’s Google Cloud, the firm supplies one of the most popular cloud systems. According to Statista, the Azure platform will be the largest cloud service provider in 2021, with a market share of about 22%.
The third-quarter report from Microsoft (MSFT) received strong reviews from Wall Street experts. Furthermore, several of them have upped their stock recommendations to overweight and have a good understanding of the price goals.
As a result, Wolfe Research, Citi, and BMO Capital upped their target prices for Microsoft shares on Wednesday, April 27. Hood, for its part, updated its sales prediction to a range of $52.4 billion to $53.2 billion, up 14% from previous estimates.
MSFT is up 14.70 percent over the last year and 3.14 percent over the last week in terms of performance. The stock’s price index has dropped -8.17 percent in one month and -3.41 percent in three months. In the last six months, it has returned -10.38 percent.
