|
The company's results, excluding a USD1.2 billion investment charge which came to around USD0.20 a share, beat most Wall Street analysts' expectations who, according to Thomson Financial/First Call, were expecting earnings between USD0.38 and USD0.42 a share.
Nevertheless, the firm's figures came in behind what it reported this time last year when the company earned USD2.2 billion, or USD0.46 a share, before an accounting adjustment. With the adjustment included, EPS for the September quarter in 2000 came to around USD0.40. First-quarter revenues stood at USD6.13 billion, up over five percent from the USD5.8 billion it reported in Q1 2000.
While the firm expects to increase its earnings substantially for the current quarter, forecasting sales of between USD7.1 billion and USD7.3 billion and EPS of between USD0.49 and USD0.50 a share, the company will still fall behind industry watchers' expectations. The consensus estimate on Wall Street is for earnings of USD0.51 in Q2, according to First Call.
Microsoft also said, for fiscal 2002, ending in June, profit will be between USD1.61 and USD1.66 a share on sales of between USD28.4 billion and USD29.1 billion.
"We reported solid revenue and operating results this quarter, fueled by strong customer demand for our Windows 2000 and .NET Enterprise Server families, and our cost-control efforts," said John Connors, chief financial officer at Microsoft. "While we are looking forward to the upcoming launches of Windows XP, Xbox and MSN7, we also recognise that this is a period of unprecedented global uncertainty that could have an impact on the economy and our business."
Microsoft has said that Windows XP, which is launched later this month, is the most important update to the Microsoft product to date, yet analysts and experts remain unsure and unconvinced over the value as well as the potential success of the product. This is partly because XP will not run on many slower, older PCs and with the downturn in the industry, it seems unlikely that users will upgrade simply to run a new operating system. Despite that, it is clear that its launch will be a significant boom for the firm when millions of PC users buy the product to see for themselves.
Xbox on the other hand is set to take the home computer gaming industry by storm. Microsoft is expecting ship almost 1.5 million units by the end of the year and the product is due to hit Europe in March of 2002.
In Ireland, Microsoft operates three separate groups; they are the European operations centre, the European product development centre and its Ireland sales and marketing services group. The company has had a presence in Ireland since 1985 and employs almost 1,800 people here. In fact, the importance of Microsoft to the Irish economy can hardly be doubted. The company spends more than IEP250 million per annum in the Irish economy and the firm's revenues accounted for over five percent of the total goods and services exported from Ireland last year.
Microsoft can be found at http://www.microsoft.com
|
