Microsoft is reaping the rewards of its push toward on-demand business software, beating Wall Street expectations for the company’s second-quarter earnings.
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With its tiny presence in mobile markets and facing chronically weak personal-computer sales, Microsoft has reoriented itself toward products delivered over the internet, investing heavily in reshaping its product line and building new tools.
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The company was buoyed during the quarter by sales of new editions of server and database software that topped Microsoft’s own expectations.
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Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Azure network of on-demand data storage and processing power, the main challenger to Amazon.com dominance in that field, saw revenue rise 93 percent from a year earlier.
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Overall, the Redmond company posted an adjusted profit of 83 cents a share during the last three months of 2016, topping both analysts’ estimates and the adjusted 78-cent profit reported a year earlier.
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Adjusted revenue was $26.1 billion, up 2.2 percent from a year earlier.
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The adjusted results include $2 billion in sales of Windows 10 that Microsoft technically defers to future years, an accounting practice designed to spread the cash generated by sales of the operating system over the lifetime of the devices it is installed on.
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Stripping out those Windows sales and other one-time items, Microsoft’s unadjusted revenue stood at $24.09 billion during the quarter. Net income on that basis was $5.2 billion, or 66 cents a share, compared with $5 billion, or 62 cents a share, a year earlier.
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The results, reported shortly after the market closed regular trading Thursday, gave Microsoft stock a boost in after-hours trading, rising to $65.19, up 1.4 percent.
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It closed regular trading at $64.27, an all-time high.
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We have continued to build momentum, Chief Executive Satya Nadella said on a conference call with analysts.
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The company’s Intelligent Cloud segment, which includes server tools as well as Azure, reported revenue of $6.9 billion, up 8 percent from…