Microsoft Reports Record Fourth Quarter Revenue Overall, But Dynamics Revenue is Flat for the Year

Microsoft Corp. today announced record fourth-quarter revenue of $16.04 billion for the quarter ended Mar. 31, 2010, a 22% increase from the same period of the prior year.

In the three months ending June 30, business revenue within the Microsoft Business Division, in which Dynamics products are included, increased $326 million or 8%, reflecting in part a 4% increase in Microsoft Dynamics revenue, as well as  licensing of the 2010 Microsoft Office system to transactional business customers, and growth in multi-year licensing revenue. 

Dynamics revenue was flat for the year compared with fiscal year 2009.  "For the last several years, the bulk of Microsoft's [Dynamics] investment has seemingly gone into CRM and CRM Online, and some investment into AX," according to Matt Rosoff, Research VP of analyst firm Directions on Microsoft.  "I don't expect this year's financial results to change that, although it might accelerate any planned consolidation of ERP lines."

Within MBD, the company also noted that the increase in net income was a result of a decrease in operating expenses offset by a decrease in revenue.

As a whole, Microsoft top line revenue was strong and beat most estimates with a record for fourth quarter revenue.

"IT spending is picking up from last year, " according to Rosoff, and that spending is helping with Windows and sales of infrastructure software.  ""It seems like they are on the growth trajectory from before the downturn with revenue and net income pretty much back to where they were before things started to fall apart in 2009," Rosoff added.

As a whole, operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $5.93 billion, $4.52 billion and $0.51 ...