About an hour before the company’s analyst call, Microsoft has unloaded its third quarter fiscal results, which to be blunt, are a marked improvement over last year’s momentous (but not in a good way) profits downturn. Reported revenue is $14.5 billion for the quarter ending March 31st, beating Wall Street expectations and culminating in a $4.01 billion net income. Those figures exclude a $305 million deferral related to Office 2010 but do include $78 million the folks in Redmond gave to Yahoo! in a search deal. That didn’t help the Online Services Division’s bottom line — it reported a $713 million loss this quarter, compared to a $411 million loss this time last year. On the bright side, the Entertainment and Devices division (of which Xbox is a part) recorded $165 million in earnings, up from a $41 million loss year-over-year. Windows and Windows Live continues to be the breadwinner, unsurprisingly, with a $3.061b operating income (versus $2.273b in 2009 — before Windows 7‘s debut). We’re still sifting through the paperwork and will also be listening in on Microsoft’s 5:30PM ET call, so stay tuned!
Update: Market Watch is reporting that Apple has today surpassed Microsoft on the S&P 500, with a float-adjusted market cap of $241.5b, compared with Microsoft’s $239.5b. Exxon is still at the top. It’s worth noting that this is a free-float index that only considers stocks readily available for trading, and not free-floating stocks such as those held by company insiders. According to the Wall Street Journal, that important caveat explains the discrepancy between those figures and what we’re seeing in full market value, where Microsoft’s $275.3b cap still bests Apple’s $241.63b. So which is the largest tech company based on market capitalization? That depends on how you measure.
Update: The call is on and yes, we’ll be liveblogging.
Microsoft snags $14.5b revenue, $4.01b net income for Q3 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 22 Apr 2010 17:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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