Microsoft earnings: What to expect from the company's fourth-quarter results

Yahoo Finance tech editor Dan Howley previews Microsoft's Q4 earnings report.

Video Transcript

JARED BLIKRE: --got to ask you about Microsoft. I know you're teeing up those earnings happening this week. What are-- what is Wall Street and investors expecting?

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, it's really interesting to see what's going on here. We're expecting revenue of 52.5 billion. That's versus the 46.2 billion that it's seen in Q4 last year. Again, this is their fiscal Q4. Microsoft's earnings schedule is all sorts of weird. So if you end up reading this article, don't correct me on the Q4. That's Microsoft's fault. We're also expecting earnings per share of 2.29. That's versus last year of 2.17.

But the overall look, I think, is going to be, obviously, at their cloud business. We've seen a slight slowdown in their intelligent Cloud business. It's nothing huge, but we had seen that go down from around 30% year over year to just around 31% year over year in Q1 2022 to 26% year over year growth in Q2 and Q3. So not a massive drop, but it's still something to keep your eyes on.

And then obviously, this all comes after Microsoft revised its Q4 expectations down because of what they said was foreign currency headwinds. And then it also comes after Microsoft and Netflix announced that they're going to be teaming up so that Microsoft can provide the technology behind Netflix's upcoming ad-supported subscription tier. So a lot of news going on here. We're hoping to hear from CEO Satya Nadella about that Netflix team-up, and then hopefully more color on what that foreign exchange headwind did for the company in the quarter.

DAVE BRIGGS: All right, Dan Howley. Good stuff, brother. Thank you.