Microsoft (MSFT) Overpowers Earnings Forecast Helped By Server Numbers, Shares Soar

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) posted EPS for its fiscal first quarter of  $.40 compared with $.48 last year. The company has revenue $12.92 billion. Both numbers were well ahead of Wall St. forecasts of  $.32 a share on revenues of $12.4 billion. The revenue figure was off 14% for the three months ending September 30.

Microsoft deferred $1.47 billion, or $.14 a share for sales of Windows 7

Sales at the company’s large Windows division fell from $4.3 billion last year to $2.6 billion in the most recent period. Operating income for the unit dropped from $3.1 billion to $1.5 billion.

Microsoft’s servers and tool divisions did extraordinarily well with revenue flat at $3.4 billion and operating income up from $1 billion to $1.3 billion. The business division also held up given the effects of the recession. Sales dropped from $5 billion to $4.4 billion. Operating income was down to $2.9 billion from $3.2 billion.

Games and entertainment, the Xbox operations, posted flat sales of $1.9 billion. Operating income nearly doubled to $312 million. Microsoft’s online operation, including MSN, posted a revenue decline from $520 million to $490 million. The operation lost $480 million compared to $321 million last year.

Microsoft is reducing operating expense guidance to $26.2 billion to $26.5 billion, for the full year ending June 30, 2010.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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