Microsoft has surpassed $100 billion (all figures USD) in revenue for the first time in its history, thanks to the continued success of its cloud services.
For the fourth quarter of 2018, the Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant reported revenues of $30.1 billion, a 17 per cent gain from the same time last year, as well as a net income of $8.9 billion.
The gains were driven by Azure, the company reported.
“We are investing aggressively to build Azure as the world’s computer,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella during an earnings call. “I shared our vision for the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge a little over a year ago – vision that is now quickly becoming reality.”
Dynamics and LinkedIn rounded out the top three performers for Microsoft. LinkedIn especially had a record year, according to the earnings call, with more than 575 million members now using the service, representing its fifth consecutive quarter of growth.
“We have united the world’s leading professional cloud with the world’s leading professional network and proved that we have an integration model that works, enabling LinkedIn to accelerate growth while retaining its member-first ethos,” said Nadella.
However, Microsoft’s cloud services remained at the top, with commercial cloud revenue growing by 53 percent in this past year, driven by three key markets: the U.S., Western Europe, and the U.K.
Of all its cloud computing services, Azure had the most significant improvement, with an increase of 89 per cent.
Dynamics 365 saw revenue growth of 61 per cent and Office 365 by 38 per cent, with the 31.4 million consumers now subscribing to the latter platform.
Windows revenue increased by 11 per cent, thanks to Windows Commercial and OEM Pro versions; however, the company saw a decline of three per cent in non-Pro revenue due to increasing competition in that category.
Despite a tough year that involved market concerns over Meltdown and Spectre, Microsoft appears to have come out on top, increasing its revenue growth and betting its future on the continued success of cloud computing services.
Our thanks to investment research platform Seeking Alpha for the transcriptions from Microsoft’s July 19th, Q4 earnings call.
