Microsoft reports record Q4 earnings driven by cloud sales

Microsoft (MS) reported record fourth-quarter earnings last year. With a global increase of game users and working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the company posted higher-than-expected revenue growth.

MS announced on Tuesday (local time) that its fourth-quarter revenue rose 16% to $43.1 billion and net income increased 33% to $15.5 billion. It is the highest quarterly revenue in company history. Those figures exceeded Wall Street’s expectation of net income of $12.6 billion and sales of $40.2 billion.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the pandemic has been a big plus for MS. With more companies introducing the cloud-computing service required for remote-work in the pandemic, MS’ Azure sales increased 50% compared to the same period of last year. As a result, Azure sales surpassed that of Windows operating system.

In addition, MS is seeing an increase of users of its team collaboration software “Teams” amid the pandemic. The software giant’s new gaming console Xbox, which MS has released in seven years, is also showing strong sales amid the pandemic.


Gun-Huk Lee gun@donga.com