Microsoft share price: 3 things to watch for in its Q3 results

Microsoft share price may be depend on three important factors. Wall Street will want these questions answered before Microsoft’s Q3 earnings report.

Will cloud computing help Microsoft’s Q3 results?

Microsoft’s Q3 earnings could be affected by its investment in the cloud. The company’s Azure Cloud revenue grew by 76% in its Q2 revenue, and is now the biggest rival to Amazon Web Services. Piper Jaffray analyst, Alex Zukin, said that cloud growth is key to Microsoft’s Q3 profits.

‘Cloud growth, Azure especially, will be a key focus area for investors. Our checks suggest that Azure continues to benefit from share gains predicated on close relationships with large enterprises and a quickly-closing feature/functionality gap relative to Amazon Web Services,’ said Zukin.

Cloud computing will be a major factor that could affect Microsoft’s Q3 revenue.

Will the GitHub acquisition help Microsoft’s Q3 profits?

Microsoft’s Q3 profits in intelligent cloud computing were likely helped by its purchase of coding platform GitHub. Microsoft GitHub’s chief executive officer(CEO), Nat Friedman, touted the purchase as a way to help web developers.

‘Our vision is to serve every developer on the planet, by being the best place to build software. This is a dream opportunity for all of us at GitHub, and we couldn’t be more excited to roll up our sleeves and start this next chapter,’ said Friedman.

GitHub's partnership with the corporation could help Microsoft's Q3 results.

Could AI innovation help Microsoft’s Q3 revenue?

Microsoft is deeply invested in cloud technology and wants to bring innovation to artificial intelligence (AI).

Microsoft VP for Business AI, Gurdeep Pall, wants the corporation to be a leader in machine teaching, using human experience to train machine learning interfaces.

‘I think AI has to break away from being something that only AI experts can work on, otherwise the application of the AI and its impact on the world is going to be very limited. I think we have to get to the place where it’s not that 10,000 AI experts in the world are the only ones who can actually apply AI in different scenarios across many vertical domains,’ said Pall.

Microsoft’s Q3 earnings will have to answer many questions for investors and prove that new acquisitions and a focus on cloud computing will drive profits.