Microsoft surpasses Q1 expectations as cloud revenue steals the spotlight

Microsoft (MSFT) posted its first-quarter earnings following the market close on Wednesday, easily surpassing Wall Street’s forecasts for both revenue and profit, propelled by the continued strength of its cloud operations.

For the quarter, the tech giant revealed earnings per share (EPS) of $3.72 on revenue of $77.7 billion, outperforming analyst forecasts of $3.68 EPS on $75.5 billion in revenue, as per the Bloomberg consensus estimates. That’s a sharp rise from the same period last year, when Microsoft estimated $3.30 EPS on $65.6 billion in revenue.