Microsoft Tops Expectations
By Adrienne Sanders
Staff Reporter
10/18/00 4:59 PM ET
Updated from 4:44 p.m. EDT
Microsoft (MSFT:Nasdaq - news) said it earned 46 cents a share excluding an accounting change in its fiscal first quarter, beating Wall Street's estimates.
Analysts expected the company to earn 41 cents a share, according to First Call/Thomson Financial. The company earned $2.58 billion excluding the accounting change in the quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with $2.19 billion, or 40 cents a share, a year earlier.
The most-recent quarter's income was reduced by $375 million because the company adopted a new accounting standard regarding derivative instruments and hedging activities. Including the change, Microsoft earned $2.21 billion, or 40 cents a share.
The software company said its revenue increased to 7.7% to $5.8 billion from $5.38 billion in the year-earlier quarter.
"Results were solid across all businesses, led by accelerating deployments of Windows 2000 Professional in the business sector and Windows Me in the consumer arena," John Connors, chief financial officer, said in a statement. "We also continued to make great progress with our server products, proving our ability to deliver mission-critical solutions to customers such as Lycos (LCOS:Nasdaq - news), FreeMarkets (FMKT:Nasdaq - news), RadioShack (RSH:NYSE - news), The Home Shopping Network and GMAC. While we remain guarded about worldwide economic conditions, we are extremely enthusiastic about our Windows 2000 generation of server products."
thestreet.com |
