Tech giant Microsoft (MSFT) is scheduled to report its fiscal first‑quarter earnings on October 29, after the market closes. Analysts expect the company to earn $3.67 per share, which would be an increase of 11.2% year-over-year. Furthermore, revenue is projected to come in at $75.37 billion compared to the prior year’s $65.58 billion.
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It is worth noting that investors will be closely watching Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud segment, which is expected to generate $30.26 billion in revenue. This equates to a year-over-year increase of more than 25.6%. When breaking down the numbers further, its cloud platform Azure is projected to grow at about 36% in constant currency. Unsurprisingly, the Intelligent Cloud segment has been one of the firm’s main growth drivers over the past several years, as demonstrated in the image below.
Separately, Microsoft’s Productivity and Business Processes segment is expected to rise by about 14.2% from last year to roughly $32.35 billion. Investors will also be paying attention to Microsoft’s capital expenditure plans (capex) and profit margins. Interestingly, the company spent close to $80 billion on capex in Fiscal 2025 in order to expand its AI infrastructure, which includes custom chips and new data centers.
Is MSFT Stock a Buy?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on MSFT stock based on 33 Buys assigned in the last three months. Furthermore, the average MSFT price target of $628.70 per share implies 18.3% upside potential. At the same time, TipRanks’ AI analyst has an Outperform rating with a $594 price target.
