Following Microsoft’s quarterly financial report released last night, the company’s shares hit a new all-time high today in after-hours trading. The stock price is up nearly 6% at the time of writing, hitting $60.63, surpassing the previous all-time high set in 1999 at the height of the dotcom bubble.
Despite something of a mixed bag on yesterday’s earnings call, investors are happy with Microsoft’s performance over the past financial quarter. The company saw sharp declines in its phone business and flat revenue in the OEM and Windows licensing division, but it beat market expectations on its Cloud, Office and Enterprise offerings, all of which are deemed vital to the business. future of society.
For years, Microsoft has been in a state of transition as the company tries to move from the declining PC market, which it still dominates, to more service-based and cloud-based approaches that are expected to dominate the coming decades in the world of technology.
With each passing quarter, under Nadella’s tutelage, Microsoft has successfully grown its cloud infrastructure and SAAS offerings. In the last quarter, for example, Azure’s revenue grew 116% compared to the same period last year.
With the PC market only expected to stabilize in the next few years and new paradigms such as intelligent services and cloud computing becoming increasingly important, Microsoft will likely continue its transition phase for some time. However, the company now seems much better positioned than a few years ago, finally finding its place in this new “mobile first, cloud first” world.
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