The company reported a profit of $3.23 per share for the second quarter of a fiscal year. The market had expected $3.12 per share, according to Bloomberg's compilation of forecasts.
Revenue increased. Sales totaled $69.6 billion, compared with an average forecast of $68.9 billion.
Of the sales, services such as Windows, Bing, Surface and Xbox accounted for $14.65 billion. This was unchanged compared to the same quarter a year earlier but beat market expectations of $14.29 billion, according to CNBC.
On the other hand, sales for the company's Azure cloud platform were below expectations – at $40.9 billion, against a forecast of $41.1 billion.
This is seen as a reason why the company's stock fell sharply in the aftermarket on Wall Street in New York before recovering somewhat again.
