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In the second quarter of this year, Microsoft's revenue increased by 15% year-on-year to $64.7 billion, and its net profit increased by 10% to $22 billion, both of which were better than market expectations. However, under the premise of a nearly 50% increase in capital expenditures (US$13.9 billion), the growth rate of Azure cloud revenue (the core part of its AI business), which the market is most concerned about, slowed down (+29%).

Microsoft management said in the earnings call that almost all capital expenditures (including financial leasing, a total of $19 billion) were given to cloud computing and AI, half of which was used to purchase CPUs and GPUs to meet customer demand; the other half was used to build and lease infrastructure such as data centers. This investment will support the company's profitability for 15 years and beyond.

This tests investors' patience. After the earnings report was released, Microsoft's stock price fell by nearly 8% after hours, and its market value fell by more than $240 billion.

The market's reaction to Microsoft's financial report was very similar to that of Google a week ago. At that time, Google's revenue and profit were also better than market expectations, but because its capital expenditure in the second quarter doubled year-on-year, its stock price rose first and then fell.

Compared to before the release of ChatGPT (the fourth quarter of 2022), Microsoft and Google's quarterly capital expenditures increased by 121% and 74%, respectively, the largest increase among the five technology giants that invested heavily in building their own data centers and purchasing GPUs from NVIDIA.

Since then, Microsoft's market value has soared by about 80%, with net growth. After more than a year of continuous growth, the market is demanding returns. However, Microsoft's net profit growth rate during the same period was only about 30%, and it has almost stopped growing since the fourth quarter of last year. In addition, the growth rate of Azure's revenue has also slowed down, so the market can only adjust its expectations. (Qiu Hao)