Microsoft has published a report for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024. The company's server business is on top, but device sales are falling, and the gaming business is supported by Activision Blizzard. This was reported by The Verge.
In total, in the last quarter of fiscal year 2024, Microsoft received $64.7 billion in revenue and a profit of $22 billion. Revenue grew by 15% compared to the same period last year, and profit by 10%.
Intelligent Cloud, a part of the company's business that also includes server products, generated $28.5 billion in revenue, up 19% year-on-year. Overall, this part of the business is now responsible for 45% of the company's total revenue. Cloud and Office offerings also grew by 12% and 13%, respectively.
Things are somewhat worse in other areas. Revenue from Windows licenses grew by 4% as computer shipments grew for three consecutive quarters. However, Microsoft's own devices are not doing so well, with Surface revenuedown 11% year-on-year. The last time device revenue was on the rise was in the third quarter of fiscal year 2023, which ended in September 2022.
As for the gaming business, everything is fine with content and services, which includes Xbox Game Pass. Revenue from this part grew by 61%, but 58% of this came from Activision Blizzard, so the increase is only 3%. But where things are really bad is with console sales, which fell by 42%.
The company did not disclose the number of Xbox Game Pass subscribers, but CEO Satya Nadella noted that Microsoft has "more than 500 million active monthly users across all platforms and devices."
Overall, revenue from the gaming business grew by 44%, but Activision Blizzard was the key factor behind this growth. The gaming company acquired last year showed a 48% increase, which means that without it, Microsoft's gaming revenue would have fallen by 4%. The situation was the same in the third quarter.
As in the case of Meta, Microsoft investors are also curious about AI revenue. As reported in the financial report, 8% of the growth of Azure and other cloud services of the company is accounted for by AI services, which is slightly more compared to the third quarter. The company expects AI revenue to gain additional growth in the second half of fiscal year 2025.