Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) is scheduled to report its fourth-quarter earnings after the close of trading on Tuesday, July 22. The consensus estimate is $0.61 per share, up from earnings of $0.59 per share a year ago.
Over the past several months, a period that corresponds with Microsoft’s Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella taking over from Steve Ballmer, investors have built up increasingly high hopes for the blue-chip tech giant, sending shares to their highest level in more than 14 years recently.
Nadella has been bold and visionary during his first five months on the job in terms of his view of what Microsoft must do to evolve. In a letter to employees on Thursday he announced the biggest round of job cuts in Msoft’s history and hinted at his focus-on-future philosophy that includes moving Microsoft away from areas like Office and Windows products and into phones and mobile devices. In the letter Nadella said the company should concentrate on “deliver[ing] digital work and life experiences that are reinvented for the mobile-first and cloud-first world.”
In the Microsoft earnings report, watch closely to see how the company’s unprecedented scale of restructuring is creating new conditions for growth. Sterne Agee’s Robert Breza said [via MW] that now that Nadella is putting his strategy to work, “investors are going to focus on growth ahead [and] we expect growth to be muted within the Nokia division for the next year, while revenues outside of Nokia should be unaffected.”
Microsoft’s Q4 sales are expected to climb 16% to $23 billion, up from $19.9 billion a year ago.
Shares of Microsoft closed at $44.69 on Friday, after closing at $44.53 on Thursday, valuing the company at about $369.69 billion. MSFT is now up 25.29% on a y/y basis and 19.46% year-to-date.
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