Microsoft said Tuesday that despite the pressures of a slowing economy, its business remained strong in the most recent quarter, with revenue up 7% and profit up 9%.
The company had revenue of $52.9 billion and profit for the quarter of $18.3 billion. Both beat Wall Street expectations.
Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing product and a key metric that investors are watching, grew revenue by 27%, in line with investor expectations. That’s still down from the 46% increase in the previous year. Overall, the segment the company calls Intelligent Cloud grew 16% year-over-year, beating expectations.
Microsoft stock jumped 5% in after-hours trading.
Microsoft, like many other tech companies, has been hampered by a sluggish economy after massive growth during the pandemic. The company announced in January that it would lay off 10,000 employees.
The company’s Windows business is sluggish as the global market for PC sales slows. His most recent quarter’s revenue from Microsoft’s personal computing segment was $13.3 billion, down 9% from the same period last year.
Still, Microsoft’s stock remains strong. The company is also poised to benefit from the artificial intelligence boom through its investment in OpenAI, the startup behind the ChatGPT chatbot. He has already integrated ChatGPT into his Bing search engine, and says he plans to incorporate AI into other of his Microsoft products.
In a statement, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella predicted that AI will spark a “new era of computing.”
