Microsoft posts 13th straight quarter of double-digit revenue growth

Microsoft Corp.’s first-quarter revenue climbed a better-than-projected 12%, strengthened by corporate demand for cloud-computing services to support customers’ remote workers and move more of their business online.

Sales in the period that ended Sept. 30 rose to $37.2 billion, the software maker said Tuesday in a statement. That exceeded the $35.8 billion average estimate of analysts polled by Bloomberg, and marked Microsoft’s 13th straight quarter of double-digit revenue growth. Net income was $13.9 billion, or $1.82 a share. Analysts had predicted $1.54 a share.

Since the pandemic started, business customers have accelerated a shift to Microsoft’s Azure internet-based computing services and online subscriptions to Office software that comes with teleconferencing programs and work-from-home tools. That’s helped shore up growth at the company, which is No. 2 in cloud infrastructure behind Amazon Web Services, even as the global economy languishes.