{"id":124318,"date":"2026-07-30T13:42:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T13:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/124318\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T13:42:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T13:42:08","slug":"microsoft-stock-surges-nearly-10-in-thursday-premarket-as-dan-ives-hails-azure-growth-the-best-baromete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/124318\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Stock Surges Nearly 10% in Thursday Premarket as Dan Ives Hails Azure Growth the \u2018Best Baromete"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"block core-block\">The sharp post-earnings rally comes as tech analyst Dan Ives labeled the announcement the \u201cmost important of this earnings season\u201d for gauging global enterprise artificial intelligence adoption.<\/p>\n<p>The Ultimate AI Barometer<\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">In a post on X, Ives emphasized that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.benzinga.com\/earnings\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Microsoft\u2019s performance<\/a> serves as a crucial signal for the entire tech industry. \u201cThere will be many earnings in the tech world in 2Q but the Microsoft quarter will be the most important of this earnings season in our view,\u201d Ives wrote.<\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">He added that \u201cthe enterprise AI demand best barometer is the demand coming out from Redmond in the Azure growth numbers\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">The company <a href=\"https:\/\/www.benzinga.com\/markets\/earnings\/26\/07\/60786971\/microsoft-stock-ai-capex-amy-hood-gpu-spending-surges-after-hours\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">validated that outlook by posting<\/a> fourth-quarter revenue of $90.01 billion, an 18% increase year-over-year that easily surpassed Wall Street consensus estimates of $87.62 billion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">Adjusted earnings per share reached $4.74, beating analyst expectations of $4.24. For the full fiscal year, total revenue reached $331.8 billion.<\/p>\n<p>Cloud and Copilot Drive Momentum<\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">Growth was spearheaded by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.benzinga.com\/markets\/earnings\/26\/07\/60788615\/as-ai-takes-on-more-work-for-users-microsoft-bets-on-usage-over-software-seats\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Intelligent Cloud division<\/a>, which generated $39.3 billion in revenue, up 32% year-over-year. Within this segment, Azure and other cloud services revenue climbed 43%, pushing annual Azure revenue past $100 billion for the first time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">Total Microsoft Cloud quarterly revenue surged 27% to $59.3 billion. Productivity and Business Processes rose 14% to $37.8 billion, while More Personal Computing fell 4% to $12.9 billion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">Demand for AI infrastructure continues to outpace supply. \u201cDemand exceeds available supply in a sort of relatively extreme moment,\u201d stated Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood, as capital expenditures reached $41 billion.<\/p>\n<p>How Has MSFT Performed In 2026?<\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">MSFT shares were down 19.25% year-to-date, up 5.96% over the last month, and lower by 23.81% over the year. It closed 0.71% lower at $390.54 per share on Wednesday, and it was up 10.17% in premarket on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">Benzinga\u2019s Edge Stock Rankings indicate that MSFT maintains a weak price trend in the short, long and medium terms, with a good quality score.<\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.<\/p>\n<p class=\"block core-block\">Image via Shutterstock<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The sharp post-earnings rally comes as tech analyst Dan Ives labeled the announcement the \u201cmost important of this&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[420,7829,8811,15008,15895,8374,40912,8734,15897,8789,15261,14912,8111,5893,5896,5892,320,7828,5891,5899,444,7912,19923,37970,34763],"class_list":["post-124318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-microsoft","tag-azure","tag-azure-ai","tag-category-analyst-color","tag-category-earnings","tag-category-earnings-beats","tag-category-equities","tag-category-futures","tag-category-general","tag-category-guidance","tag-category-large-cap","tag-category-management","tag-category-market-summary","tag-category-markets","tag-category-news","tag-category-tech","tag-cms-wordpress","tag-microsoft","tag-microsoft-ai","tag-pageisbzpro-bz","tag-symbol-msft","tag-tag-ai","tag-tag-azure","tag-tag-benznews","tag-tag-cloud","tag-tag-dan-ives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}