Microsoft Profit Jumps as Azure Growth Hits 48 Percent in First Quarter

Microsoft reported a stronger quarter than Wall Street expected on Wednesday, October 28, 2026, as growth in its Azure cloud business accelerated to 48 percent and profit climbed well past last year's level. The results landed after the market close and sent the shares higher in after-hours trading.

Revenue for the fiscal first quarter rose 19 percent to $92.28 billion, ahead of the $90.62 billion analysts polled by FactSet had expected. Net profit reached $36.63 billion, or $4.92 a share, up from $27.75 billion, or $3.72 a share, a year earlier. On an adjusted basis, Microsoft earned $4.89 a share, beating the $4.71 a share analysts had forecast.

Cloud growth does the heavy lifting

Azure was the center of the report. Growth of 48 percent in the cloud platform marked a faster pace than recent quarters and spoke directly to the question hanging over the stock: whether the enormous sums Microsoft is spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure are producing revenue to match. For this quarter, at least, the answer came back in the company's favor, and the numbers eased some of the jitters investors carried into the report.

Microsoft also reported under a new structure it adopted in September 2026. A segment called Agent and Infra, which includes revenue from Azure and Microsoft 365 products among other sources, contributed $76.8 billion of the quarter's total revenue. The company revamped its reporting segments in September, so the new breakdown is the one investors will track from here.

Shares jump after hours

The stock had a quiet regular session. Shares closed roughly flat at $531.01 on Wednesday and were up 9.8 percent for the year through the close. Once the numbers crossed, the price moved: shares jumped 4 percent to $552.33 in after-hours trading.

Buyouts run alongside the spending

The earnings arrived two days after Microsoft moved to trim its workforce through voluntary offers. On Monday, October 26, 2026, the company said it was extending buyout offers to a broad group of employees, with around 60,000 people eligible for the program, according to a person familiar with the matter cited by The Wall Street Journal. Microsoft employed 223,000 people at the end of June 2026.

It is the second such program this year. In April 2026, Microsoft announced a voluntary retirement program that offered buyouts to around 8,600 employees, and more than 30 percent accepted. The company expects a far lower share of eligible employees to accept the latest offers.

The pairing is the story of this earnings season for the biggest technology companies: record spending on data centers and chips on one side, and steady pressure on headcount and costs on the other. Alphabet, Google's parent company, was also due to report its quarterly results on Wednesday evening, and investors were watching whether its cloud growth told the same story as Microsoft's.