Microsoft posts record $331B annual revenue, plans $175B capex in 2027

Microsoft closed its fiscal 2026 in strong form, posting record annual revenue of $331 billion（約53兆円） (up 18%) and operating income exceeding $155 billion（約25兆円） (up 21%), with earnings per share reaching $4.74 (up 23% after adjusting for the impact of its OpenAI investment). In the fourth quarter alone, revenue reached $90 billion（約14兆円）, up 18% year over year on a reported basis and 17% in constant currency. Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood attributed some of the quarter's strength to a $3.2 billion（約5100億円） gain from Microsoft's investment in Anthropic and lower-than-expected expenses related to its voluntary retirement program, though these benefits were partly offset by Xbox severance and impairment charges.

Intelligent Cloud revenue, Microsoft's fastest-growing segment, rose 32% to $39.3 billion（約6.3兆円） in the quarter. Azure and other cloud services revenue increased 43%, with Hood noting that demand continued to exceed available capacity. She attributed the stronger-than-expected results partly to efficiency improvements across Microsoft's CPU and GPU fleet and process changes that enabled capacity to be delivered earlier. Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said Microsoft added 31 data centers across five continents during the quarter, bringing the year's total additions to 88, and added another gigawatt of capacity. The company remains on track to roughly double its overall capacity in two years and reduced dock-to-live times for new GPUs in its largest regions by nearly 50% over the past fiscal year. Capital expenditures totaled $41 billion（約6.6兆円） in the quarter, with about two-thirds directed toward short-lived assets, primarily CPUs and GPUs. Hood said cash paid for property and equipment was $35.8 billion（約5.7兆円）, while free cash flow was $19.6 billion（約3.1兆円）.

AI product adoption has emerged as a significant driver of commercial momentum. Microsoft 365 Copilot surpassed 30 million paid seats, with net paid-seat additions more than doubling sequentially. The number of customers with more than 50,000 Copilot seats increased more than sevenfold from a year earlier. Nadella highlighted large deployments, including NHS England's rollout to 505,000 clinicians and staff, HSBC's commitment to 200,000 seats, and EY's deployment of Microsoft's E7 suite to 400,000 employees. Microsoft has begun adding usage-based billing alongside its per-seat licensing model for Copilot offerings. GitHub Copilot reached 50 million users, while GitHub's overall user base rose to 225 million. Copilot revenue accelerated more than 60% sequentially after the company introduced usage-based billing, and one in three pull requests on GitHub now involves an agent. Microsoft's Foundry platform reached 100,000 customers and more than doubled revenue year over year, with the number of Foundry customers operating at an annualized rate of 1 trillion tokens increasing fourfold. Agent 365, introduced two months earlier, had nearly 40 million agents registered across tens of thousands of companies. Nadella also noted a multivendor strategy: Microsoft offers more than 11,000 models through its cloud catalog, including offerings from OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, and xAI, alongside its own models. The number of customers using models from multiple providers increased fivefold since the start of the year.

Microsoft Cloud revenue exceeded $214 billion（約34兆円） for the full fiscal year, with nearly 90% coming from customers outside frontier-model companies, indicating that the vast majority of cloud revenue stems from enterprise workloads beyond AI model training. Companywide gross margin was 67%, down from a year earlier due to a greater mix of Azure revenue, AI infrastructure investments, and increased product usage, though operating margin rose slightly to 45% as operating expenses increased 10%, slower than revenue growth. Productivity and Business Processes revenue increased 14% to $37.8 billion（約6兆円）, while More Personal Computing revenue declined 4% to $12.9 billion（約2.1兆円）, with Windows OEM and devices revenue falling 7% and Xbox revenue declining 10%. Nadella said the company is making decisions across Xbox content, platform, and operations to reset the business for long-term growth and expects Xbox to return to growth in fiscal 2027.

Looking ahead, Microsoft forecasts fiscal first-quarter total revenue of $89.85 billion（約14兆円） to $90.95 billion（約15兆円） (growth of 16% to 17%) and expects Azure revenue growth of about 45% in constant currency. The company expects first-quarter capital expenditures of more than $50 billion（約8兆円）, including the effect of a lease reclassification tied to an extension in the estimated useful life of data centers and office buildings. For the full fiscal 2027, Microsoft expects approximately $175 billion（約28兆円） in capital expenditures while maintaining that its underlying calendar 2026 investment expectations are unchanged. Hood said the company expects another year of double-digit revenue and operating-income growth, with operating expenses rising in the mid- to high-single-digit range, operating margins expected to decline by less than one percentage point for the full year, and the company expects to remain free-cash-flow positive.

Microsoft's fiscal 2026 results underscore the company's dual strength in AI infrastructure and commercial AI products. The $331 billion（約53兆円） in annual revenue and record operating income reflect both continued cloud dominance and accelerating adoption of AI-powered offerings across its product lines. Azure's 43% growth in Q4, while constrained by capacity limitations, demonstrates that demand for AI compute remains robust despite Microsoft's aggressive investment in data centers—the company added 88 data centers across the full fiscal year and reduced dock-to-live times for new GPUs in its largest regions by nearly 50%. This capacity pressure has prompted Microsoft to commit approximately $175 billion（約28兆円） to capital expenditures in fiscal 2027, underscoring management's confidence in sustained AI-driven demand.

The expansion of AI products tells a more granular story of where demand is concentrated. Microsoft 365 Copilot's jump to 30 million paid seats, with net additions more than doubling sequentially, and the sevenfold increase in customers deploying more than 50,000 seats point to rapid enterprise adoption. Large deployments—including NHS England rolling out to 505,000 clinicians, HSBC committing to 200,000 seats, and EY deploying to 400,000 employees—signal that organizations are integrating AI assistants at scale. GitHub Copilot's 50 million users and acceleration of more than 60% sequentially after the introduction of usage-based billing suggest a shift toward consumption-based models, which may unlock higher monetization as usage patterns mature. The Foundry platform's doubling of revenue year over year and fourfold increase in customers operating at 1 trillion tokens annualized indicate that enterprises are also adopting foundation models for their own applications.

Microsoft's forward guidance for fiscal 2027 balances growth with profitability constraints. The company expects double-digit revenue and operating-income growth while maintaining operating margins (a decline of less than one percentage point), implying that the company believes efficiency gains and volume can offset the margin pressure from the large capital base. Azure's expected 45% growth in fiscal Q1 suggests the capacity expansion is already beginning to pay off, though the company continues to signal that demand remains ahead of supply in the near term.

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