The technology giant Microsoft released its financial results for the second quarter of 2023, according to its fiscal division. Microsoft reported revenue of $52.75 billion, beating analysts’ forecasts of $52.96 billion. In the line of earnings per share, the company reported $2.32 per share, above analysts’ forecasts for a profit of $2.3 per share.
Following the reports, Microsoft’s stock recorded an increase of about 4% in late trading.
● The layoffs at the high-tech giants set them back a year, and it is not certain that they will be the last
● Developers will also go: the wave of layoffs at Microsoft is different from what is known in the industry Surgery
● The giant layoffs at Microsoft: what will happen to the workers in Israel?
The revenues of the company’s cloud division last quarter stood at $21.51 billion, an increase of 18% compared to the corresponding quarter and somewhat higher than analysts’ expectations. The company recorded a provision of 1.2 billion dollars following the efficiency plan it recently announced.
Microsoft is among the tech companies facing the significant difficulties of the global macroeconomic situation. Only recently the giant announced plans to lay off 10,000 employees, which represents about 5% of its workforce. It should be noted that Microsoft hired 40,000 employees a year until June 2022.
During the quarter, the Swiss investment bank UBS estimated that Microsoft’s Azure cloud service is facing a “steep slowdown in growth”, which caused the stock to fall. The bank cut the target price of the technology giant’s stock from $300 to $250.
deepens its foothold in the world of artificial intelligence
To deal with the creative artificial intelligence market that has been developing here in recent times, it was reported that Microsoft will invest 10 billion dollars in OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company that released tools such as “Dal-A” to the market that can produce images using short or long text with a short instruction and simple It was later reported that Microsoft will start integrating ChatGPT into its cloud services and also into its Bing search engine already in the coming months. In addition to chat, Microsoft’s cloud customers will also be able to use DALL E 2, a model that generates images and drawings according to text commands. This can mainly explain how Microsoft understands this trend and wants to adopt it.
Another storm that Microsoft has to deal with is the biggest acquisition hold-up in the history of high-tech – in January of last year, Microsoft announced its plans to acquire the gaming company Activate Blizzard , which developed Call Of Duty, Candy Crush and Warcraft, for $68.7 billion. The deal entered tests and investigations by regulators around the world and has not yet come to fruition, while the competitors also tried to outwit difficulties at the same time.
Last December, the Federal Trade Commission filed an antitrust lawsuit against the purchase. The move taken by the FTC is expected to put Microsoft in front of significant obstacles to completing the deal, and possibly even lead to its cancellation. Along with the American regulator, the deal is also being closely examined in the UK and the European Union. The deal is scheduled to be signed by June 2023 and is subject to regulatory review and Activision Blizzard shareholder approval. If Microsoft succeeds, it will become the third largest gaming company in the world by revenue, after Tencent and Sony.