Windows 10 / Microsoft
Microsoft's shares touched their highest point in 15 years in after-hours trading on Thursday, as it beat revenue and earnings forecasts in the quarter to September and posted its first ever profit in search, according to The Financial Times.
An 8.3% jump in after-hours trading to $52.00, its highest level since 2000, saw Microsoft join a strong afternoon for Silicon Valley companies as Amazon reported a surprise profit and Alphabet, Google's new parent company, announced its first ever share buybacks, the report reads.
"Since July, 110 million devices have been updated to Windows 10, three times as many as Windows 7 by the same point after release. Most of those updates are by consumers but eight million business PCs are now running Windows 10," the company said.
Amy Hood, Microsoft's finance chief, said that Bing, its search unit, had hit an "important milestone" as it reached profitability for the first time, on revenues that grew 29% to more than $1 billion. Microsoft entered the search business in the late 1990s and launched Bing in May 2009.
"We expect Bing's strong trajectory to continue, remaining profitable for the remainder of the year," she added, despite its search partner Yahoo striking a new deal with Google this week.
Revenues at Microsoft were down 2% to $21.7 billion after adjusting for certain items and currency fluctuations, just ahead of Wall Street's forecasts, with earnings up to 9 cents ahead of expectations at 67 cents. Net income was up 2% to $4.6 billion compared with the same quarter a year ago.