Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) continues to remain unscathed with the current macro-economic conditions. For the recently reported third quarter, the company outpaced market expectations on the power of its cloud platform.

Microsoft’s Financials

Microsoft’s Q3 revenues grew 18% to $49.4 billion, significantly ahead of the market’s forecast of $49 billion. Non-GAAP net income was $16.7 billion, or $2.22 per share, which was also ahead of the Street’s forecast of $2.18 per share.

By segment, revenues from the Intelligent Cloud segment including Azure grew 26% to $19.05 billion, compared to the market estimate of $18.9 billion. Azure sales grew 46% over the year. Revenue from the Productivity & Business Solutions segment, which includes cloud software assets such as LinkedIn, grew 17% to $15.8 billion, in line with analyst predictions. Revenue from More Personal Computing including Windows, Xbox, and Surface, grew 11% to $14.5 billion and was ahead of the Street’s forecast of $14.3 billion.

For the fourth quarter, Microsoft forecast revenues of $52.4-$53.2 billion, compared with the market’s forecast of revenues of $52.65 billion. Microsoft forecast Intelligent Cloud revenue of $21.1-$21.35 billion for the quarter, better than the market’s estimate of $20.933 billion.

Microsoft’s Growth Areas

It was a stellar quarter for Microsoft across multiple areas. The Cloud business delivered an impressive 35% growth over the year, a 32% growth over the quarter, and exceeded $23 billion in revenues. Azure grew 49% over the year and Commercial Office 365 grew 20% over the year. The number of Azure contracts worth more than $100 million doubled over the year. Workflow Automation continues to see strong growth. Microsoft combines low-code/no-code, robotics process automation, and analytics into one solution suite with Power Platform, which recorded a 72% growth over the year. The Power Platform revenue exceeded $2 billion over the last twelve months. Given the current need for higher security offerings, Microsoft’s security customer base grew 50% to 785K. The security offering already generates more than $15 billion in trailing twelve-month revenues for the company.

Microsoft continues to improve on its vertical offerings to drive growth. Recently, it announced upgrades in cloud technologies for healthcare and life sciences with the general availability of Azure Health Data Services and updates to Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare. These solutions are helping Microsoft deliver solutions that help improve patient engagement and clinician experiences, empower health team collaboration, and improve clinical and operational insights. Azure Health Data Services has been purpose-built for protected health information (PHI) and integrates diverse datasets including clinical, imaging, and streaming data from medical devices to deliver more powerful results. The service features a suite of tools that supports the de-identification and connection of data for computing and analytics. It offers a suite of healthcare APIs that securely brings health data to the cloud and persists within a compliance boundary in Azure.

Microsoft continues to build on its strengths through expanded tie-ups. It recently announced partnerships with Boeing BA and Kraft Heinz KHC. Its partnership with Boeing will allow Boeing to leverage the Microsoft Cloud and its AI capabilities, updating its technology infrastructure and mission-critical applications with new intelligent solutions that are data-driven. Its partnership with Kraft Heinz will develop solutions meant to accelerate the consumer goods giant’s transformations and create a more resilient supply chain. Kraft Heinz will migrate a majority of its global data center assets to Azure and its enterprise resource planning (ERP) to SAP on Azure.

Its stock is trading at $277.52 with a market capitalization of $2.08 trillion. It had climbed to a 52-week high of $349.67 in November last year. It hit a 52-week low of $238.07 in May last year.