{"id":22492,"date":"2026-04-30T03:26:31","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T03:26:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/22492\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T03:26:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T03:26:31","slug":"microsoft-q3-2026-earnings-beat-on-cloud-and-ai-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/22492\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Q3 2026 earnings beat on cloud and AI growth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Microsoft<\/a> reported fiscal third-quarter revenue of $82.9 billion, up 18% from the same period a year earlier, with earnings per share of $4.27 on a GAAP basis, up 23% year over year. Wall Street had been looking for revenue of $81.39 billion and earnings of $4.06 per share, per CNBC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Compared with $25.82 billion earned in the same period last year, net income climbed to $31.78 billion in the quarter that closed March 31. Microsoft returned $10.2 billion to shareholders through dividends and stock repurchases during the quarter.<\/p>\n

Microsoft’s AI business surpassed an annual revenue run rate of $37 billion, up 123% year over year, CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement. Adoption of the 365 Copilot AI add-on for commercial Office users has reached more than 20 million seats, a jump from the 15 million figure the company shared in January, according to CNBC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Growth of 40% in Azure and other cloud services cleared the roughly 39% analysts had penciled in. Revenue for the wider Intelligent Cloud segment \u2014 covering Azure, server products, and the GitHub and Nuance cloud services \u2014 came in at $34.68 billion, a 30% increase from a year ago.<\/p>\n

At $35.01 billion, up roughly 17%, the Productivity and Business Processes segment \u2014 home to Office software, LinkedIn, and Dynamics \u2014 topped analyst forecasts. Microsoft 365 Consumer cloud revenue grew 33%, while Dynamics 365 revenue rose 22%. LinkedIn revenue increased 12%.<\/p>\n

Total Microsoft Cloud revenue hit $54.5 billion, a 29% gain, while the company’s commercial remaining performance obligations \u2014 which include both unearned revenue and future-recognized amounts \u2014 reached $627 billion, reflecting a 99% increase year over year.<\/p>\n

The More Personal Computing unit, which covers Windows, Xbox, Surface, and Bing search advertising, brought in $13.19 billion, down 1% from last year but above the $12.73 billion expected by Wall Street. Windows licensing revenue fell 2%, Xbox content and services dropped 5%, while search advertising revenue, excluding traffic acquisition costs, rose 12%.<\/p>\n

Capital expenditures and finance leases totaled $31.9 billion for the quarter, up 49%, but still below the $34.9 billion analysts expected, according to CNBC<\/a>. The company\u2019s gross margin was 67.6%, its lowest since 2022, due to higher depreciation from building new data centers.<\/p>\n

CFO Amy Hood said in a statement that results exceeded expectations across revenue, operating income, and earnings per share, “reflecting strong execution and growing demand for the Microsoft Cloud.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Microsoft reported fiscal third-quarter revenue of $82.9 billion, up 18% from the same period a year earlier, with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[420,7829,2656,6305,320,419,7828,15573],"class_list":{"0":"post-22492","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-microsoft","8":"tag-azure","9":"tag-azure-ai","10":"tag-cloud-services","11":"tag-earnings-per-share","12":"tag-microsoft","13":"tag-microsoft-365","14":"tag-microsoft-ai","15":"tag-unearned-revenue"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22492","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=22492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}