On Thursday, Microsoft released its third-quarter earnings report, unveiling a staggering detail that capital expenditures surged by 79% to $14 billion, marking the highest growth in nearly eight years. This indicates that Microsoft made a massive financial investment during the quarter.
Microsoft's Chief Financial Officer, Amy Hood, stated during the earnings call that demand still exceeds supply, even with such substantial investments. The explosion in demand mainly comes from AI-related work, especially from OpenAI and its chat functionality, ChatGPT. Microsoft is also integrating AI into various services and functions, including the Bing search engine and the Teams communication app.
Indeed, a significant amount of money was spent on AI in the third quarter, which yielded quite favorable returns. Microsoft's Azure cloud service revenue increased by 31%, with AI business contributing 7%. Hood explained that the performance related to AI was impacted by production capacity, a factor that might continue if not improved, limiting Microsoft's ability to deliver AI capabilities.
Azure is a key project for Microsoft, contributing billions in revenue each quarter and maintaining a growth rate far exceeding most other departments. It has also successfully stood out in competition with direct rival Amazon.
Another noteworthy project this quarter is Microsoft's programming platform GitHub. This world-renowned platform saw a substantial increase from 1.3 million to 1.8 million this quarter, largely due to the incorporation of AI. The addition of AI has optimized and simplified many functionalities, making the platform popular among entities ranging from small startups to large corporations like Goldman Sachs and Ford Motor Company.
Hood also shared future outlooks, stating that the lack of production capacity has severely hindered Microsoft's development. Therefore, there will be a significant increase in related expenditures in this quarter, mainly for the construction of cloud-related infrastructure, and called for an increase in capital expenditures in the new fiscal year starting July 1.
Following the earnings report, Microsoft's stock price rose by 5%, significantly exceeding the revenue and profit expectations set by Wall Street and analysts.
