Microsoft Q4 FY2016: $5.5bn net income, $22.6bn revenue; cloud up, Surface up, phone down

Microsoft has published its latest financial results, covering the fourth and final quarter of its 2016 fiscal year.

The company reported net income of $5.5 billion non-GAAP ($3.1 billion GAAP) for the three months ending June 30, 2016, on revenue of $22.6 billion non-GAAP ($20.6 billion GAAP). Earnings per share stood at $0.69 non-GAAP ($0.39 GAAP).

For its full 2016 fiscal year, Microsoft reported net income of $22.3 billion non-GAAP ($16.8 billion GAAP) on revenue of $92.0 billion non-GAAP ($85.3 billion GAAP).

Revenue in Microsoft's Productivity and Business Processes division was up by 5% (8% in constant currency), rising to $7.0 billion. Office commercial products and cloud services saw decent growth of 5% (9% in constant currency), with Office 365 growth soaring by 54% (59% in constant currency). Dynamics also saw solid growth, including growth of more than 2.5 times more Dynamics CRM Online paid seats year-over-year (YoY).

On the consumer productivity side, Office grew 19% (18% in constancy currency), and Office 365 consumer subscribers now stand at 23.1 million.

As expected, Microsoft's cloud performance was impressive, with Azure revenue increasing by 102% (108% in constant currency) and Azure compute usage more than doubling YoY. Server products and cloud services revenue was also up by 5% (8% in constant currency).

Surface revenue was up 9%, "driven by Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book" - which isn't surprising, given that the Surface 3 is now being slowly phased out, with production ending by the end of the year. However, there was more disastrous news for the company's phone hardware business, in which revenue declined by 71% (70% in constant currency).

Xbox Live monthly users increased by 33% YoY, and now total 49 million - an increase of 3 million compared with last quarter.

And there was strong growth in its search business too, in which advertising revenue (excluding traffic acquisition costs) grew by 16% (17% in constant currency) "with continued benefit from Windows 10 usage".