Seattle — Microsoft reported third-quarter financial results Thursday that surpassed analyst expectations, once again rising on the strong growth in its cloud products.
Microsoft said revenue from its Azure cloud computing service grew 93 percent during the quarter, a trend that has marked the company’s momentum in the increasingly important market for the last several quarters. Its “commercial cloud” group — which encompasses Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics 365 — grew 58 percent to $6 billion during the quarter.
The Redmond company reported a profit of $7.4 billion, or 95 cents a share, on revenue of $26.8 billion for the quarter. Analysts were expecting Microsoft to report earnings of 85 cents a share on $25.8 billion in revenue.
Revenue was up more than 15 percent from the same period last year, and profit increased 35 percent.
