Microsoft Revenue/Profit - Analyzing
I just read Tim Anderson’s “Keeping track of Microsoft financials” where he boils down Microsoft financial performance to a simple spreadsheet and summarizes based on that. I like that approach. Focus on the results.
My key metric, overall, has always been: while we grow revenue -are we growing profit at a higher rate than we grow revenue? Is our business getting more efficient? Are we getting value from our investments/improvements? So I would just add 2 columns for % Change and a total row, like this:
| Segment | Revenue | Change | % Change | Profit | Change | %Change |
| Client (Windows + Live) | 4,415 | 967 | 28% | 3,061 | 788 | 35% |
| Server and Tools | 3,575 | 84 | 2% | 1,255 | 31 | 3% |
| Online | 566 | 59 | 12% | -713 | -302 | ?? |
| Business (Office) | 4,243 | -265 | -6% | 2,622 | -134 | -5% |
| Entertainment and devices | 1,665 | 36 | 2% | 165 | 206 | ?? |
| | 14,464 | 881 | 6% | 6,390 | 589 | 10% |
Quarter ending March 31st 2010 vs quarter ending March 31st 2009, $millions
Tim’s summary was: “Windows 7 booming, Office a bit slow prior to the release of the 2010 version, Online still draining money. Xbox doing OK. In other words, nothing much of interest.”
Now I notice that he used to use % changed, but the 2 question marks in the right column probably pushed him to just publish the change amount this year. E&D is out of the red now, and Online is deeper in it.
Hopefully, these next few quarters will fire on more cylinders with some coming releases…
For the real results and a conference call with analysts see http://micrsoft.com/msft
WOLVES Update
I’m very excited about the set of software we’re in the middle of releasing which I call “WOLVES”, which should only help our customers, and our shareholders.
[There are other things that we’ve recently shipped or are about to ship, but this is the stuff I live in…]