Thursday, the world's largest software maker , Microsoft Corp. reported a third-quarter profit that nearly doubled from a year ago, despite sales that fell short of Wall Street forecasts due to leaner licensing business and a sharp drop in the dollar's value reports the WP.
In its fiscal third quarter, ending March 31, the Redmond-based software maker said it earned US$2.56 billion, or US$0.23 per share, up from US$1.32 billion, or 12 cents per share, a year ago.
The results included legal charges of US$0.05 per share, down from US$0.17 a share in the same period last year, and a US$0.04 charge for the expense of stock-based employee compensation -- required by new accounting rules.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial were looking for the company to post earnings of 32 cents per share on sales of $9.83 billion in the latest quarter.
"We had a good quarter overall with some real strong growth out of our server and tools business," said Scott Di Valerio, Microsoft's corporate vice president and controller. That unit posted a profit of US$824 million on revenue of US$2.44 billion, up about 33 percent from earnings of US$616 million on revenue of US$2.2 billion in the year-ago period.
For next year, Microsoft said that revenues would grow at 9-11 per cent to reach $43.3-44.1 billion, an increase from the 8 per cent growth predicted for the current year.
