Microsoft is set to report earnings Tuesday after the close and hold a call with analysts at 5:30 p.m. ET. MSFT last traded at $240.22. The stock is down over 50% in the course of a year.
Last quarter, the company issued weak guidance on its earnings call, despite better-than-expected results. This quarter, the tech giant is forecast to post a single-digit earnings decline. According to CNBC tech reporter Jordan Novet, Microsoft has told investors to brace for gloomy results in its fiscal second-quarter. He will be watching for comments on clients’ efforts to optimize their spending on Microsoft’s Azure cloud-infrastructure services, and more detail on a hardware cutback following a brief reference to that change in Microsoft’s Jan. 18 layoff announcement.
Historically, Microsoft has a history of posting better-than-expected earnings, beating estimates 80% of the time, according to Bespoke. The stock has averaged modest gains on earnings days, but it has seen swings of more than 6% after the last two reports.
