Microsoft shares rise over 5% as Azure grows 48%

Microsoft shares rose more than five percent Wednesday afternoon after the company reported revenue and profit above forecasts by analysts surveyed by FactSet, helped by 48 percent growth in its Azure cloud computing business.

The company reported $92.3 billion in total revenue and more than $36.6 billion in profit in a securities filing Wednesday. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had expected about $90.6 billion in revenue and $35.1 billion in profit.

Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella said the company was delivering more capability, choice, control and cost efficiency for customers across its technology stack.

The results came days after Microsoft offered voluntary buyouts to about 60,000 employees, roughly a quarter of its workforce. It was the company's second voluntary buyout offer this year, after giving seven percent of its US workforce the option to retire early in April. Microsoft had 223,000 employees globally at the end of June, down from 228,000 at the end of 2025, according to regulatory filings.

Microsoft nearly doubled spending on property and equipment to $39 billion from the same period last year. Nadella said the company added 24 data centers worldwide last quarter.

Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood said overall capital expenditures reached $45.2 billion, with about three-quarters spent on short-lived assets such as memory chips and storage. She said Microsoft expects capital expenditures to exceed $50 billion in the final quarter of 2026, bringing total spending for the year to $170 billion.

Microsoft competes with Amazon Web Services and Google parent Alphabet for cloud computing customers. Synergy Research Group said AWS was the global leader by revenue in the second quarter, followed by Microsoft and then Google.