Microsoft Jumps as Azure Tops $100 Billion for the Year

Microsoft (MSFT) jumped about 17% in afternoon trading Thursday, on pace for one of its steepest single-day gains in years, after the company’s fiscal fourth-quarter report showed its Azure cloud business growing faster than Wall Street expected. The stock changed hands near $455, up from Wednesday’s close of $390.54. Investors had been nervous. A soft quarter would have deepened a July slide; the report gave them a reason to buy instead.

Azure crossed $100 billion

Revenue for the quarter that ended June 30 reached $90.0 billion, up 18% from a year earlier, according to the company’s earnings release. That topped the roughly $87.6 billion Wall Street had modeled. Net income rose 31% to $35.8 billion, and diluted earnings came to $4.81 a share. Cloud carried the quarter. Azure and other cloud services revenue grew 43%, an acceleration from the prior period and ahead of what analysts had forecast.

Microsoft said Azure revenue passed $100 billion for the first time across the full fiscal year, a marker the company had been building toward while it spends heavily on data centers for artificial-intelligence work. Intelligent Cloud, the segment that houses Azure, brought in $39.3 billion, up 32%. The wider Microsoft Cloud grouping reached $59.3 billion, up 27%.

The rest of the business held up. Productivity and Business Processes, the unit that includes Office and the Microsoft 365 Copilot assistant, rose 14% to $37.8 billion, and the company said the assistant had reached more than 30 million paid seats. More Personal Computing, home to Windows and devices, slipped 4% to $12.9 billion.

Spending met demand

The reaction had as much to do with spending as with sales. Microsoft’s capital investment has climbed steeply through the AI build-out, with additions to property and equipment totaling $116 billion for the fiscal year. That bill has made some shareholders uneasy. Thursday’s numbers let them connect the outlay to cloud demand they can actually see. Reuters reported that the results eased AI-spending fears that had unsettled large technology stocks this week, a stretch in which Meta Platforms and Alphabet drew cooler receptions for their own investment plans.

A quiet run into the report

The size of the move stands out against the lead-in. Microsoft had drifted lower through late July, easing from $402 on July 20 to Wednesday’s close, and it fell in the prior session. Thursday did most of the month’s work. Shares are up 22% over the past 30 days, nearly all of that earned in a single session, and the 90-day gain sits at 19%. Volume topped 77 million shares by early afternoon, already more than double the recent daily average. Even after the surge, the stock trades 18% below its 52-week high of $555.45.

What to watch

The full quarterly filing and the earnings-call transcript will fill in margin detail and the path of capital spending into fiscal 2027. Microsoft’s next scheduled quarterly report is expected in late October. The question hanging over big technology all week was whether heavy AI budgets would show up as revenue. On Thursday, one big spender answered it.

This is a general-market summary for information only — not investment advice, and not a recommendation regarding any security.