Microsoft Revenue Up 2 Percent, but Profit Drops 12 Percent

“We saw strong execution in many regions around the world, however, performance in the U.S. was weaker than expected,” Ms. Hood said.

Wall Street has been trying to separate economic issues from how Microsoft is performing, said Brett Iversen, who heads investor relations for the company. “We are focused on what we can control, which is the execution side,” he said.

The past several months have been turbulent for Microsoft. In December, its $69 billion deal to acquire the video game maker Activision was challenged by regulators in the United States, and last week it began laying off about 10,000 workers.

On Monday, Microsoft announced a major new investment in OpenAI, the start-up behind ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence breakthroughs, and signaled plans to include A.I. in an array of Microsoft products.

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, emphasized the urgency with which the company is pursuing A.I. “We fundamentally believe that the next platform wave is going to be A.I.,” he said on a call with Wall Street analysts, while adding that Microsoft is moving aggressively to “catch the wave.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/24/technology/microsoft-profit-drop.html