{"id":126114,"date":"2026-07-31T18:56:26","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T18:56:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/126114\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T18:56:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T18:56:26","slug":"microsoft-stock-surges-nearly-10-in-thursday-premarket-as-dan-ives-hails-azure-growth-the-best-barometer-for-enterprise-ai-after-q4-earnings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/126114\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Stock Surges Nearly 10% in Thursday Premarket as Dan Ives Hails Azure Growth the \u2018Best Barometer\u2019 for Enterprise AI After Q4 Earnings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:<\/a>MSFT<\/a>) shares surged 10.17% in pre-market trading to $430.26 after delivering a blowout fiscal fourth-quarter earnings<\/a> report. <\/p>\n

The sharp post-earnings rally comes as tech analyst Dan Ives labeled the announcement the “most important of this earnings season” for gauging global enterprise artificial intelligence adoption. <\/p>\n

The Ultimate AI Barometer <\/p>\n

In a post on X, Ives emphasized that Microsoft’s performance<\/a> serves as a crucial signal for the entire tech industry. “There 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,” Ives wrote. <\/p>\n

He added that “the enterprise AI demand best barometer is the demand coming out from Redmond in the Azure growth numbers”. <\/p>\n

The company 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

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

There 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. The enterprise AI demand best barometer is the demand coming out from Redmond in the Azure growth numbers. Street will digest this \ud83c\udfc6\ud83c\udfaf <\/p>\n

\u2014 Dan Ives (@DivesTech) July 30, 2026<\/a> <\/p>\n

Read Also:Ross Gerber Says MSFT Is ‘Crushing It,’ Jim Cramer Calls Quarter a ‘Tour De Force’ After Earnings Beat<\/a> <\/p>\n

Cloud and Copilot Drive Momentum <\/p>\n

Growth was spearheaded by the 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

View more earnings on MSFT<\/a> <\/p>\n

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

Demand for AI infrastructure continues to outpace supply. “Demand exceeds available supply in a sort of relatively extreme moment,” stated Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood, as capital expenditures reached $41 billion. <\/p>\n

Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella announced that Microsoft 365 Copilot crossed 30 million paid<\/a> seats, with net additions doubling quarter-over-quarter. “The secular shift is clear,” Nadella affirmed regarding the enterprise AI transformation, as commercial remaining performance obligation surged 84% to $678 billion. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) shares surged 10.17% in pre-market trading to $430.26 after delivering a blowout fiscal fourth-quarter earnings…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126115,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[420,7829,11170,31511,320,7828,34001],"class_list":["post-126114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-microsoft","tag-azure","tag-azure-ai","tag-dan-ives","tag-earnings-season","tag-microsoft","tag-microsoft-ai","tag-the-enterprise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126114","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=126114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}