Microsoft Q4 2020 earnings: $38B revenue on big Windows, gaming, and Surface growth

Today, Microsoft published its earnings report for the fourth quarter of its fiscal year 2020, or the second quarter of the calendar year. The firm reported $38B in revenue, showing 13% growth (15% in constant currency) over the same quarter last year.

As usual, that"s broken up into three key groups. Productivity and Business Process, for once, showed the least growth at 6% (8% CC), and was responsible for $11.8B in revenue. Intelligent Cloud showed the biggest growth with the most revenue, at 17% (19% CC) and $13.4. Most surprising was More Personal Computing though, which accounted for 14% (15% CC) growth for $12.9B in revenue, an impressive feat given that it"s usually pretty stagnant these days.

Operating income was $13.4B for net income of $11.2B and $1.46 diluted earnings per share.

Productivity and Business Processes growth was driven by Office 365, unsurprisingly. Office 365 commercial grew by 19% (22% CC), while non-cloud Office commercial products declined by 34% (33% CC), combining for 5% (7% CC) growth on all Office commercial products and cloud services. Office consumer products and cloud services grew by a total of 6% (7% CC), driven by a 23% increase of Office 365 consumer subscribers to 42.7 million.

LinkedIn revenue grew by 10% (11% CC) with a 27% increase in sessions. Dynamics products and cloud services grew a total of 13% (15% CC), driven by a 38% (40% CC) increase in revenue for Dynamics 365.

In the Intelligent Cloud department, Azure revenue grew by 47% (50% CC), while server products were stagnant for a total of 19% (21% CC) growth in server products and cloud services. Also, Enterprise Mobility saw a 26% growth in seats to 147 million.

More Personal Computing did see more growth than usual, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and people working from home. Windows Pro revenue declined by 4%, but non-Pro revenue, which is typically stagnant, grew by 34% year-over-year. In total, Windows commercial products and cloud services grew by 9% (11% CC).

That"s not all though, because Surface revenue grew by 28% (30% CC) for the same reason. And if you can"t guess, another thing that people do when they"re stuck at home is play games. Gaming revenue is up 64% (66% CC), driven by a 65% (68% CC) increase in Xbox content and services revenue. Finally, search revenue, excluding traffic acquisition costs, declined by 18% (17% CC).

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