Update: Boy did we nail this one! Microsoft beat its estimates, having a strong showing Wednesday afternoon at its earnings report. They posted $1.51 per share, almost $37 billion in revenue, and a lot of the credit goes to their Azure cloud service technology. Thinknum will now take its victory lap, you can read the original story below where we predicted all this.
Microsoft ($MSFT) is doing quite well. Don't believe us? We have the data to prove it.
Well, that, and the fact that the company's stock price seems incapable of losing any real value. People will still buy computers that run Windows, and as long as that fact remains ironclad, they will continue to make money. Which makes CEO Satya Nadella's life a whole lot easier.
The famed hardware and software maker is expected to post its earnings after the market closes today and post a quarter of $1.32 per share increase in its report. That's up 20% over last year, if you were wondering. They'll also tell us they made $35.69 billion dollars, which is an ungodly amount of money.
A major reason for this? The ongoing battle with cloud server leader Amazon Web Services. MS snagged a juicy government contract with the Defense Department in October, which is a great offensive play to combat Amazon. Alongside its software, hardware, Xbox brand, and other fun businesses, MS is aggressively pursuing cloud intelligence and computing power to lead them into the next decade. That, and receiving money from the government, that helps too.
Fun fact: the number of employees Microsoft gained in the last five years went up 48%, and its stock went from $43 to $167. There's some staggering math for you, if you wanted to rethink your life and how much money you missed out on not investing in Microsoft back in the day.
Nadella seems to want more and more workers, since the last six months have been a hiring spree, aka a 33% increase in job openings.
You can see that Microsoft clearly loves hiring engineers, which makes sense since technology usually requires engineers to make things work and to build the future.
The most important brands under Microsoft's wings also received good news, since they all gained followers. Hooray! The Microsoft Store, Xbox, and Mixer all are doing a good job of maintaining awareness and promoting a strong brand identity. And, Xbox is apparently cooler than Microsoft itself, so good job Head of Xbox Phil Spencer.
The only possible bad thing to point out about Microsoft, other than doing shady business deals with the army, is Facebook engagement is either flat or going down. It's not a huge problem, but just something we'd like to point out if you needed something pessimistic in your Microsoft news breakdown today. But Instagram followers are up (not shown here, get our demo for that access). They're owned by Facebook, so that's something.
About the Data:
Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales, and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue, and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales.
