(Reuters) – Microsoft beat Wall Street estimates for first-quarter revenue on Wednesday as efforts to build out data center capacity and AI-driven demand boosted its cloud business.
Shares of the Redmond, Washington-based company rose about 2% in trading after market hours, having gained more than 15% so far this year on the back of a boom in artificial intelligence technologies.
The quarterly earnings are Microsoft’s first since it restructured the way it reports its businesses to align them more closely with how they are managed. That move has, however, made it harder to estimate the quarter’s performance.
Azure revenue grew 33%, compared with Visible Alpha estimates for a 32% increase.
Earnings per share stood at $3.30, compared with analysts’ estimate of $3.10, according to LSEG data.
Revenue rose 16% to $65.6 billion in the fiscal first quarter ended September, compared with analysts’ average estimate of $64.5 billion, according to LSEG data.
(Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru and Anna Tong in San Francisco; Editing by Anil D’Silva)
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