Microsoft Corp. reported a 10 percent rise in quarterly sales and higher earnings on Thursday, helped by corporate demand for its products ahead of a change in its licensing practices.
For its fourth fiscal quarter ended June 30, Microsoft said its net profit was $1.53 billion, or 28 cents per share, up from $65 million, or 1 cent per share, a year earlier when it took a charge on investment losses.
Microsoft took an after-tax charge for investment impairments of $806 million in the quarter, or 15 cents per share. Stripping out those charges, the software giant would have posted a per-share profit of 43 cents per share.
That profit excluding charges was above Microsoft's own expectations of a profit of 41 cents to 42 cents, which did not account for the one-off charge.
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