After the close Thursday Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) shares blasted off to new highs, trading over the high of $58.70 set back in August. In the post market shares of the tech giant closed over $60 for the first time in over 17 years.
The focus of this earnings report was how the company's investment in its cloud products would pay off. According to their report, sales of the cloud product doubled in its first quarter which was a driving factor in the earnings beat. Microsoft has long been known as the software maker. From the windows operating system to the popular Office suite of productivity programs, that were staples for the company. Recently Microsoft has shifted towards the cloud where it can compete with rivals such as Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN).
Sales of the cloud based product "Azure", which companies use to host websites, apps and data, rose an astonishing 116%. Revenues for it's "intelligent cloud" business also rose 8.3% to $6.38 billion which beat analysts expectations of $6.27 billion.
"We are not just building or moving (clients') IT," Nadella said on an analyst call. Customers "are building new digital services for hyper scale. And that's what is probably unique in terms of what has changed year over year for us."
Going forward Microsoft forecasts that sales for its intelligent cloud business will be between $6.55 billion and $6.75 billion in the next quarter. As for investors in the stock, its hard to argue a bearish position when shares reach a 17 year high with this level of excitement.