Microsoft’s market cap tops $4T after better-than-expected earnings report

US tech giant Microsoft saw its market capitalization exceed the $4 trillion threshold in after-hours trading Wednesday as the firm's financial results exceeded market expectations in the April-June quarter, driven by strong growth in revenue from Azure and other cloud services.

The stock price of Microsoft rose 8.28% to $555.74 in after-hours trading.

If the rally continues Thursday, Microsoft would become the second company to exceed $4 trillion after Nvidia.

The tech firm's net income rose to $27.23 billion in the fiscal fourth quarter ending June 30, up 24% from $22.04 billion a year ago, according to the company's financial results released Wednesday.

Microsoft's revenue climbed 18% in the same period to $76.44 billion, up from $64.7 billion a year earlier, the results showed.

The company's earnings per share increased 24% on an annual basis to $3.65 in the April-June period.

The figures came in above market expectations.

Microsoft's revenue from server products and cloud services increased 27%, driven by Azure and other cloud services revenue growth of 39%.

Revenue from the company's Productivity and Business Processes sector, which houses LinkedIn and Office productivity software, was $33.11 billion, up 16% compared to a year ago.

The More Personal Computing unit, including video games, gadgets, Windows and search advertising, brought in $13.45 billion, up 9%.

During the quarter, Microsoft reported other expenses of $1.71 billion. Known losses on equity method investments like OpenAI are included in here. In the previous quarter, there were $623 million in other expenses.