But the stock retreated after management announced softer-than-expected guidance for the technology giant's third quarter — underscoring our decision to remain sidelined buyers for now. Revenue for the three months ended Dec. 31 came in at $52.75 billion, slightly missing analysts' forecasts of $52.94 billion, according to estimates from Refinitiv, even as revenue growth from the cloud computing unit, Azure, slightly outperformed expectations. Adjusted earnings-per-share of $2.
The single most important line item in this segment — and, arguably, for the entire company — is revenue growth from Azure and other cloud services. Azure revenue growth increased 31%, or 38% on a constant currency basis, year-over-year. Expectations came down significantly over the past few weeks as analysts slashed growth estimates on concerns about a moderation in cloud consumption and customers optimizing their workloads.
Microsoft is wrong... their cloud business will not decelerate. Follow the analysts, not the C suite.
With these kind of earnings, 5% layoffs won't be enough if companies want to get 'real'. Either they ride out multi year slowdown without cutting as still they have lot of money (or) cut 30-40% employees and whip company into shape. $msft