Microsoft made $88 billion profit in FY2024 thanks to Activision Blizzard boost

• Microsoft earned $88 billion in net income during its 2024 financial year
• Following the favourable results the company aims to "lead the AI era"

Microsoft earned $245.1 billion in revenue during its 2024 financial year with a net profits of $88.1 billion, at increases of 16% and 22% respectively.

The tech conglomerates’ fiscal year ended on June 30th, 2024 with the company now reporting a "solid" final quarter, which contributed $64.7 billion in revenue and $22 billion in net income to those totals.

And while Office 365 products, Xbox products and services, cloud services and even LinkedIn revenues were highlighted for their growth, Microsoft made no specific mention of mobile in its financial report.

Acquiring achievements

After nearly two years of approval hunting and legal box-ticking, Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard was finally completed last October and brought together two titans of the video games industry. Between them, they have since driven Xbox content and services revenue up by 61% in Microsoft’s Q4, with 58% points of net impact attributed to results of the acquisition.

That means Xbox revenue climbed by 3% on its own, separate to the deal, providing further context to the company's upcoming Game Pass price hike.

Office products and cloud services however saw significant revenue rises in Q4, up 12% on the commercial side and 3% with consumers with the latter’s subscriber base now totalling 82.5 million.

Another climber was Intelligent Cloud revenue, which reached $28.5 billion in Q4 at a year-on-year increase of 19%. Microsoft Cloud performed even better, with $36.8 billion and a 21% increase.

Total revenue across all Microsoft enterprises rose from $56.2 billion in Q4 2023 to $64.7 billion in Q4 2024, up by 15% year-on-year. Meanwhile, net income rose from $20.1 billion to $22 billion, at an increase of 10%.

"We closed out our fiscal year with a solid quarter, highlighted by record bookings and Microsoft Cloud quarterly revenue of $36.8 billion, up 21% (up 22% in constant currency) year-over-year," said Microsoft executive VP and CFO Amy Hood.

Time for trends

The absence of a mobile breakdown in Microsoft’s report is but a microcosm of its previous lack of presence in the sector. Late to the mobile revolution and outmatched by Apple and Android in a highly saturated market, its Activision Blizzard deal was an expensive but fast way to get back on track. However, it seems that on mobile at least its investment is yet to bear tangible fruit.

While an Office 365 subscription does allow use of the Microsoft suite in app form, the tech giant’s presence is clearly built more around PC. There's still no Xbox store on mobile either, but that could be changing soon.

Microsoft's video game future

Discussing the financial results during an earnings call, Microsoft executive chairman and CEO Satya Nadella did acknowledge the company's newfound potential in mobile:

"When I think about the Activision Blizzard portfolio, it comes with great assets for us to cover both PC and console, and then, of course, assets to cover the mobile sector, which we've never had before.

"We feel that now, we have both the content and the ability to access all the traditional high-scale platforms where people play games: console, PC and mobile. But we’re also excited about the new sectors, right? 

"I mean, the fact that even in this last quarter we expanded xCloud to Amazon TV, that’s the type of new axis that really helps us to reach new gamers - or the same gamers everywhere they want to play. And ultimately that will show up in software plus services and transaction revenue for us, which is really our long-term KPI. That’s what we’re building towards, and that was the strategy behind Activision Blizzard as an asset.

"We now have over 500 million monthly active users across platforms and devices. And our content pipeline has never been stronger.

"Our strong performance this fiscal year speaks both to our innovation and to the trust customers continue to place in Microsoft. As a platform company, we are focused on meeting the mission-critical needs of our customers across our at-scale platforms today, while also ensuring we lead the AI era."

At Candy Crush maker King’s HQ, we spoke with head of AI and machine learning Luka Crnkovic-Friis about the Microsoft acquisition and resultant AI "opportunities" at King.