Oct 28 (Reuters) - Microsoft surpassed expectations for quarterly cloud revenue on Wednesday, signaling that its hefty AI investments were paying off at a time Wall Street grows increasingly wary of Big Tech's debt-fueled spending.
The software and cloud company's free cash flow also exceeded expectations by about $10 billion in the quarter, as spending on AI infrastructure came in below estimates and revenue grew.
That sets it apart from rivals such as Alphabet and Meta, whose free cash flow has been
squeezed by heavy AI spending, pushing the once cash-rich companies to borrow more.
Shares of Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft were up about 4% in extended trading. The stock has risen about 9% so far this year, through Wednesday's close.
The results also show Microsoft cashing in on corporate demand for AI, easing fears that the technology threatens its software business and that it is too exposed to unprofitable OpenAI.
In recent months, CEO Satya Nadella has tried to meet corporate America's growing appetite for AI and its rising costs, by looking beyond the most powerful models from OpenAI and Anthropic. Microsoft has released a string of cheaper models as businesses balk at mounting AI bills; its new Copilot Cowork agent lets users switch between models.
"By helping organizations build and own their own intelligence, and earning trust through agent safety and security, we are translating our innovation into growing adoption," Nadella said in a statement on Wednesday.
STRONG AZURE GROWTH
Revenue at Microsoft's Azure cloud computing business grew 48% to $33.17 billion in the first quarter ended September, topping Visible Alpha's estimates of $32.84 billion. Azure revenue came in at $29.4 billion in the prior quarter.
"Microsoft's first-quarter report was about as clean as it gets for a company this size," said Jesse Cohen, senior analyst at Investing.com. "After Meta's and Alphabet's numbers revived AI-spending anxiety, this is the counterweight. Demand still exceeds supply, the commercial backlog is enormous, and returns are finally showing up in earnings and overall revenue."
Last month, Microsoft decided to disclose Azure revenue in dollars, instead of just growth rates, offering a clearer picture of how its cloud business stacks up against rivals Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud.
Capital expenditure for the quarter stood at $45.2 billion, up from $34.9 billion in the year-ago period. Microsoft's own projection for first-quarter capital expenditures was $50 billion.
The company reported free cash flow of $18.6 billion. Analysts were expecting free cash flow of $8.54 billion, according to Visible Alpha.
Jonathan Neilson, Microsoft's vice president of investor relations, attributed the lower than expected capital expenditure to delays rather than any changes to the company's underlying spending plans.
"We did see some third-party capacity deliveries that we expected in first quarter were actually delayed," Neilson said.
Overall, Big Tech is expected to pump more than $700 billion this year into building data centers and securing the hardware and energy needed to develop and run AI technologies.
While faster revenue growth at these companies indicates their bets could be paying off, concerns over the cost of financing the outlay have heightened over the past few weeks.
Shrinking cash flows and rising debt loads at US tech companies, including recent stress at neocloud CoreWeave, as well as record-high costs to insure Meta's debt against default have all added to market turmoil.
Investors last week sold off shares in Meta and many stocks central to the AI trade after the Facebook parent raised its annual capital spending forecast and announced plans to sell new stock to help fund that spending.
Earlier on Wednesday, hyperscaler Oracle said it expects capital spending to peak this fiscal year and next, but pledged to raise no more than $20 billion in additional financing for AI through fiscal 2030.
Microsoft had forecast capital expenditure of $190 billion in 2026. The tech giant also faces pressure as increasingly sophisticated agentic AI tools threaten its productivity software business.
Some analysts, however, believe that Microsoft's strong balance sheet gives it an edge over rivals as AI spending rises. According to Truist, the company's 5-year credit default swaps — a measure of perceived default risk — remain the tightest among tech giants, even as spreads have widened across much of the AI trade.
(Reporting by Deborah Sophia and Aditya Soni in Bengaluru and Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Diti Pujara and Matthew Lewis)
