Microsoft announced its financial results for the second quarter of fiscal year 2024 ended December 31 last year on Tuesday (November 30), which recorded revenue of $62 billion, an increase of 18%, and the main driver was Microsoft Cloud, which recorded $33.7 billion in revenue in the quarter, an increase of 24%. Microsoft hit a 2Earnings per share of $93 were up from 22 USD.
In the financial report, Microsoft's largest revenue category is intelligent cloud computing (intelligent cloud), which recorded revenue of $25.9 billion in the quarter, an increase of 20%; Productivity and business processes came in second place, with revenue of $19.2 billion, up 13%; More Personal Computing revenue rose 19 percent to $16.9 billion, and Activision Blizzard, which Microsoft acquired in October, was included in the category.
Microsoft Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President Amy Hood said that the strong execution of Microsoft's sales team and partners drove Microsoft Cloud revenue to $33.7 billion, an increase of 24% over the same period of the previous year.
Aside from the name and number, Microsoft did not specify which services belong to Microsoft Cloud in its financial report, but Microsoft's official website defines Microsoft Cloud as a technology platform composed of many products and solutions.
Looking at the performance of Microsoft's single product or service, the largest increase in the quarter was Xbox Content & Services, with revenue up 61%, mainly due to the inclusion of Activision Blizzard, Azure and other cloud computing services up 30%, Dynamics 365 up 27%, and Microsoft Cloud up 24%. The only decline in Microsoft's product categories was in device revenue, which fell 9 percent.
As Microsoft intends to embed artificial intelligence (AI) into various products and services, the benefits of AI are not easy to calculate, but Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that people have shifted from talking about AI to applying AI at scale, and by integrating AI into every layer of Microsoft's technology stack, Microsoft is winning new customers while helping to bring new revenue and productivity in every area. On the day of the earnings release, Microsoft's stock price fell slightly by 033% to 407$26.