What just happened? Microsoft was briefly flying high yesterday when it became only the third US company to pass a market cap of $1 trillion. The achievement came in the wake of strong fiscal third quarter financial results, which pushed up the company's share price.
Thursday saw Microsoft's stock open at $130 per share, pushing its total market cap to above the $1 trillion mark. Only Apple and Amazon have managed to pass this milestone in the past.
Microsoft generated $30.6 billion during the quarter, a year-on-year increase of 14 percent. Profit, meanwhile, rose 19 percent to $8.8 billion. As usual, the company's biggest growth came from its cloud services segment, which saw a 41 percent revenue increase compared to the same period last year. Its Azure cloud, server products, and enterprise services arm brought in $9.7 billion in revenue.
Microsoft's Windows, Xbox, and Surface segment contributed $10.7 billion in revenue, an 8 percent YoY increase, while Office, LinkedIn, and Dynamics generated $10.2 billion.
"In Windows, the overall PC market was stronger than we anticipated driven by improved chip supply that met both unfulfilled Q2 commercial and premium consumer demand as well as better than expected Q3 commercial demand," said Microsoft's chief financial officer, Amy Hood.
Earlier this month, it was reported that Windows 10 users had reached an all-time high as Windows 7 users declined---a result of the old OS's end of extended support phase drawing closer. At last count, Windows 10 had 800 million installs and is likely to hit one billion this year.
Microsoft is now back under that trillion dollar valuation. At the time of writing, its market cap is $990 billion, putting it ahead of rivals Apple ($967 billion) and Amazon ($936 billion).