Microsoft Profit, Sales Rise Amid Trump Economic Woes

Microsoft’s latest financial results have pleased Wall Street as the software giant remained relatively immune to the economic turmoil of Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office.

Redmond posted healthy rises in both profits and revenues for its third quarter thanks to cloud growth, which helped push Microsoft’s share price up 6 percent in after-hours trading on Wednesday to $395.26.

Meanwhile Microsoft’s vice chair and President Brad Smith earlier this week announced five digital commitments to Europe, which included commitments to European governments about “continuity of access”, in an effort to reassure Europe that Donald Trump will not be able to cut off critical technology.

Q3 financials

Smith had admitted that European leaders were shocked when Trump temporarily suspended military and intelligence support to Ukraine, and among Smith’s commitments was a promise that Microsoft’s cloud computing service in the continent will be overseen by a European board of directors and operating under European law.

Meanwhile the US economy shrank in the first three months of the year, according to official data, which has triggered fears of an American recession and a global economic slowdown.

But Microsoft has provided strong financial results that have not been impacted by Trump’s tariff chaos.

For the third quarter ending 31 March, Microsoft posted a net profit up 18 percent at $25.8bn (£19.4bn) from $21.9bn (£16.4bn) in the same year-ago quarter.

Third quarter revenues rose 13 percent to $70 billion (£52.5bn) from $61.8bn (£46.4bn) in the same year-ago quarter.

Analysts polled by FactSet had expected Microsoft to post revenue of $68.44 billion for the quarter.

Divisional breakdown

“Cloud and AI are the essential inputs for every business to expand output, reduce costs, and accelerate growth,” said Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO at Microsoft. “From AI infra and platforms to apps, we are innovating across the stack to deliver for our customers.”

And there was equally good fiscal performances when examining the individual business lines.

Revenue in Productivity and Business Processes rose 10 percent to $29.9bn, as Microsoft 365 Commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 11 percent and Microsoft 365 Consumer products and cloud services revenue increased 10 percent.

LinkedIn revenue increased 7 percent; Dynamics products and cloud services revenue increased 11 percent; revenue in Intelligent Cloud increased 21 percent to $26.8bn; revenue in More Personal Computing increased 6 percent to $13.4bn, as Windows OEM and Devices revenue increased 3 percent, Xbox content and services revenue increased 8 percent, and search and news advertising revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs increased 21 percent.

Microsoft returned $9.7 billion to shareholders in the third quarter of fiscal year 2025.