The net profit of the world's largest software manufacturer Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ: MSFT) in the fourth quarter of 2017 fiscal year ended June 30, rose 2.1 times to $ 6.51 billion, or $ 0.83 per share, compared to $ 3.12 billion, or $ 0.39 per share, for the same period last fiscal.
Net income per share in the previous quarter included a tax credit of 23 cents per share in connection with the liquidation of the mobile phone business, the company said in a press release.
The profit of Microsoft excluding non-recurring factors increased to $ 0.98 per share.
Quarterly revenue of the company rose 13% to $ 23.31 billion. Excluding one-time factors, revenue increased by 9.1% to $ 24.7 billion.
The consensus forecast of experts polled by Thomson Reuters was about a profit of $ 0.71 per share with revenue of $ 24.27 billion (adjusted figures).
Microsoft has increased financial performance, in part due to strong business performance in the sphere of cloud services.
Revenue of Smart cloud, which includes Azure cloud service and business for the release of server software, in April-June rose 11%, to $ 7.43 billion. Analysts on average expected an increase to $ 7.32 billion. Azure's sales have almost doubled (+97%).
The Productivity and Business Processes division, which in particular produces the Office application suite, increased in revenue by 21% to $ 8.4 billion. Office 365 sales grew by 43%, the number of subscribers rose to 27 million.
LinkedIn increased Microsoft's revenue in the past quarter by $1.07 billion, but the unit recorded an operating loss of $361 million.
Meanwhile, the More Personal Computing business, including Windows, Xbox gaming consoles and Surface tablets, cut its revenue by 2% to $8.84 billion.
Since the first day of 2017, Microsoft's net profit increased by 26%, to $ 21.2 billion, while the revenue added 5.4%, to $ 89.95 billion.