Microsoft revenue beats estimates as Covid-19 crisis boosts cloud business

Microsoft Corp on Wednesday beat Wall Street sales and profit expectations, powered by sharp demand for its Teams chat and online meeting app and Xbox gaming services as the world shifted to working and playing from home because of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The company’s shares, up over 12 per cent this year, rose about 5 per cent in extended trading.

The results reflect Chief Executive Satya Nadella’s focus over his six-year tenure on cloud computing, in which companies tap Microsoft’s data centres for computing power – a growing business dominated by Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services.

For the fiscal fourth quarter, Microsoft gave business-unit forecasts that were below analyst estimates, predicting tough times for LinkedIn and some small-business software sales.