Microsoft profits up despite pandemic

Microsoft on Wednesday posted a sharp rise in its profits in the latest quarter, despite the coronavirus pandemic.

Surpassing Wall Street expectations, the US technology giant reported a fiscal third-quarter profit of $10.75 billion — up from the same period last year by 22%. The net income was posted at $1.40 per share against a Wall Street projection of $1.27 a share. Microsoft's revenue from January to March saw a 15% rise from last year, at $35.02 billion.

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A high demand for Microsoft's cloud computing services, as people work from home during the global health emergency, protected the company from the coronavirus blow to its other products.

Microsoft's advertising revenue for its LinkedIn jobs network and search engine Bing suffered from the pandemic but the software giant said there was an increased demand for products like Xbox games and the workplace video conferencing service, Teams.

"We've seen two years' worth of digital transformation in two months," chief executive Satya Nadella said. "From remote teamwork and learning, to sales and customer service, to critical cloud infrastructure and security — we are working alongside customers every day to help them adapt and stay open for business in a world of remote everything."

The company's "intelligent cloud," which includes its Azure platform for enterprise, saw a 27% rise in revenue at $12.3 billion — making it the most successful service this quarter.

Read more: Virtual communication: Staying connected when working from home

dvv/dr (AFP, AP, Reuters)

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