Cloud Performance Fuels Microsoft's First Quarter Results

In the first fiscal Quarter of 2021, ended September 30, Microsoft posted revenue of $37.2 billion, an increase of 12% compared with the same period last year. Operating income was $15.9 billion and has jumped 25%, while net income rose 30% to $13.9 billion. Diluted earnings per share was $1.82 and increased 32%.

“The next decade of economic performance for every business will be defined by the speed of their digital transformation,“ said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. “We are innovating across our full modern tech stack to help our customers in every industry improve time to value, increase agility, and reduce costs.“

“Demand for our cloud offerings drove a strong start to the fiscal year with our commercial cloud revenue generating $15.2 billion, up 31% year over year,“ said Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft. “We continue to invest against the significant opportunity ahead of us to drive long-term growth.“

Revenue in Productivity and Business Processes was $12.3 billion and increased 11%. Office Commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 9% driven by Office 365 growth of 21% (up 20% in constant currency). Office Consumer products and cloud services revenue increased 13% and Microsoft 365 Consumer subscribers increased to 45.3 million. LinkedIn revenue increased 16%, while Dynamics products and cloud services revenue increased 19% (up 18% in constant currency).

Revenue in Intelligent Cloud was $13.0 billion and increased 20% (up 19% in constant currency). Server products and cloud services revenue increased 22% (up 21% in constant currency) driven by Azure revenue growth of 48% (up 47% in constant currency). Revenue in More Personal Computing was $11.8 billion and increased 6%, with Windows OEM revenue declining 5%, and Windows Commercial products and cloud services revenue increasing 13% (up 12% in constant currency).

Microsoft returned $9.5 billion to shareholders in the form of share repurchases and dividends in the first quarter of fiscal year 2021. That is an increase of 21% compared to the first quarter last year.