SEATTLE — Microsoft’s quarterly earnings blew past investor expectations on Wednesday, fueled by growth in sales of server software and the company’s range of cloud-computing offerings.
Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in recent years to reshape the company into a seller of on-demand software and computing power over the internet, as its traditional businesses of Windows and out-of-the-box Office stagnate.
Investors have cheered the company’s progress in that aim, particularly in an environment in which other business technology giants such as IBM and Oracle have struggled to navigate similar transitions.
Microsoft’s “commercial cloud” — a grouping that includes business sales of Office 365, the Azure network of on-demand computing power, and other business tools — was on pace in September to bring in $13 billion over the course of a full year. That set of businesses “continues to impress,” Brent Thill, an analyst with UBS, said in a note to clients.
In after-hours trading Wednesday, Microsoft shares climbed more than 5 percent, exceeding $60 a share and surpassing the all-time closing highs reached in 1999.
Sales in Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud segment, which includes server software and Azure, grew 8 percent from a year earlier, to $6.4 billion for the three months ended Sept. 30, the first quarter of Microsoft’s fiscal 2017.
Productivity and Business Processes, home to the Office franchise, posted a 6 percent rise in sales, to $6.7 billion driven by growing business sales of the Office 365 productivity suite.
Those gains helped make up for another quarter in which Windows, formerly a driver of Microsoft’s growth, remained stuck in neutral. Revenue in Microsoft’s More Personal Computing segment fell 2 percent, to $9.3 billion.
Overall, the company, headquartered near Seattle, earned an adjusted 76 cents a share during the quarter. That was above the 68 in adjusted profit financial analysts were expecting.
Microsoft’s adjusted revenue was $22.3 billion, up 3 percent from a year earlier.
That figure includes about $1.9 billion in sales of the Windows 10 operating system that Microsoft officially defers to future years to comply with accounting rules. The company recognizes Windows revenue over a multi-year period designed to line up with the lifetime of the computer the software is installed on.
Stripping out those deferred Windows sales, revenue during the quarter were $20.4 billion, little changed from a year earlier. Net income was $4.6 billion, down 4 percent.
On that basis, per share income was 60 cents a share, compared with 61 cents a share a year ago. Microsoft shares had finished the regular session on Thursday at $57.25, down 0.5 percent on the day.
