Microsoft Q4 Highlights: Earnings Top Estimates, Commercial Cloud Revenue Up 36% And More

Technology giant Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) reported earnings after the market close on Tuesday. Here are the key things to know from the report.

What Happened: Fourth quarter revenue was $46.2 billion, up 21% year-over-year and ahead of the Street consensus of $44.1 billion. Earnings per share of $2.17 beat the consensus of $1.90.

Net income of $16.5 billion was up 47% year over year.

Productivity and business processes revenue of $14.7 billion was up 25% year over year. The sector was led by growth in Dynamics of 33% and LinkedIn up 46% including marketing revenue up 97% year over year.

Intelligent cloud segment revenue of $17.4 billion was up 30% year over year.

The company’s more personal computing segment had fourth-quarter revenue of $14.1 billion, up 9%. Xbox gaming revenue fell 4% in the quarter.

Microsoft's full fiscal year revenue was $168.1 billion, up 18% year over year.

Related Link: If You Invested $1,000 In Microsoft At Its IPO, Here’s How Much You’d Have Now

Why It’s Important: Cloud continued to be the highlight of Microsoft’s earnings report with the segment seeing strong growth across several of the business lines.

“Our commercial cloud revenue grew 36% year-over-year to $19.5 billion,” said CFO Amy Hood said.

Microsoft Azure revenue was up 51% in the quarter, following up the third quarter that had year-over-year growth of 50% for the company.

“Our results show that when we execute well and meet customers’ needs in differentiated ways in large and growing markets, we generate growth, as we’ve seen in our commercial cloud,” said CEO Satya Nadella.

Nadella highlighted the company’s gaming, security and LinkedIn businesses which have all passed $10 billion in annual revenue over the past three years.

MSFT Price Action: Shares of Microsoft are down 2% to $239.75 in after-hours trading Tuesday.