Microsoft Corporation

Greetings and welcome to the Microsoft Fiscal Year 2024 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Brett Iverson, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. On the call with me are Satya Nadella, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Amy Hood, Chief Financial Officer, Alice Jolla, Chief Accounting Officer, and Keith Dolliver, Corporate Secretary and Deputy General Counsel. On the Microsoft Invest Relations website, you can find our earnings press release and financial summary slide deck. which is intended to supplement our prepared remarks during today's call and provides the reconciliation of differences between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. More detailed outlook slides will be available on the Microsoft Investor Relations website when we provide outlook commentary on today's call. Microsoft completed the acquisition of Activision Blizzard this quarter, and we are reporting its results in our more personal computing segment beginning on October 13th, 2023. Accordingly, our Xbox content and services revenue growth investor metric includes the net impact of Activision. Additionally, our press release and slide deck contain supplemental information regarding the net impact of the Activision acquisition on our financial results. On this call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP items. The non-GAAP financial measures provided should not be considered as a substitute for or superior to the measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. They are included as additional clarifying items to aid investors in further understanding the company's second quarter performance in addition to the impact these items and events have on the financial results. All growth comparisons we make on the call today relate to the corresponding period of last year, unless otherwise noted. We will also provide growth rates in constant currency, when available, as a framework for assessing how our underlying business is performed, excluding the effect of foreign currency rate fluctuations. Where growth rates are the same in constant currency, we will refer to the growth rate only. We will post our prepared remarks to our website immediately following the call until the complete transcript is available. Today's call is being webcast live and recorded. If you ask a question, it will be included in our live transmission, in the transcript, and in any future use of the recording. You can replay the call and view the transcript on the Microsoft Investor Relations website. During this call, we will be making forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could materially differ because of factors discussed in today's earnings press release, in the comments made during this conference call, and in the risk factor section of our Form 10-K, Forms 10-Q, and other reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We do not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statement. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Satya.

Thank you, Brett. It was a record quarter driven by the continued strength of Microsoft Cloud, which surpassed $33 billion in revenue, up 24%. We have moved from talking about AI to applying AI at scale. By infusing AI across every layer of our tech stack, we are winning new customers and helping drive new benefits and productivity gains. Now I'll highlight examples of our momentum and progress starting with Azure. Azure again took share this quarter with our AI advantage. Azure offers the top performance for AI training and inference and the most diverse selection of AI accelerators, including the latest from AMD and Nvidia, as well as our own first party silicon, Azure Maya. And with Azure AI, we provide access to the best selection of foundation and open source models, including both LLMs and SLMs, all integrated deeply with infrastructure, data, and tools on Azure. We now have 53,000 Azure AI customers. Over one-third are new to Azure over the past 12 months. Our new models of service offering makes it easy for developers to use LLMs from our partners like Cohere, Meta, and Mistral on Azure without having to manage underlying infrastructure. We have also built the world's most popular SLMs, which offer performance comparable to larger models, but are small enough to run on a laptop or mobile device. Anka, Ashley, AT&T, EY, and Thomson Reuters, for example, are all already exploring how to use our SLM PHY for their applications. We have great momentum with Azure OpenAI Service. This quarter, we added support for OpenAI's latest models, including GPT-4 Turbo, GPT-4 with Vision, Dolly 3, as well as fine-tuning. We are seeing increased usage from AI-first startups like Moveworks, Perplexity, Symphony AI, as well as some of the world's largest companies. Over half of the Fortune 500 use Azure OpenAI today, including Ally Financial, Coca-Cola, and Rockwell Automation. For example, at CES this month, Walmart shared how it's using Azure OpenAI service along with its own proprietary data and models to streamline how more than 50,000 associates work and transform how its millions of customers shop. More broadly, customers continue to choose Azure to simplify and accelerate their cloud migrations. Overall, we are seeing larger and more strategic Azure deals with an increase in the number of billion-dollar-plus Azure commitments. Vodafone, for example, will invest $1.5 billion in cloud and AI services over the next 10 years as it works to transform the digital experience of more than 300 million customers worldwide. Now on to data. We are integrating the power of AI across the entire data stack. Our Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform brings together operational databases, analytics, governance, and AI to help organizations simplify and consolidate their data estates. Cosmos DB is the go-to database to build AI-powered apps at any scale, powering workloads for companies in every industry, from AXA and Kohl's to Mitsubishi and TomTom. KPMG, for example, has used Cosmos DB, including its built-in native vector search capabilities, along with Azure OpenAI service to power an AI assistant, which it credits with driving an up to 50% increase in productivity for its consultants. All up, Cosmos DB data transactions increased 42% year-over-year. And for those organizations who want to go beyond in-database vector search, Azure AI Search offers the best hybrid search solution. OpenAI is using it for retrieval augmented generation as part of ChatGPT. And this quarter, we made Microsoft Fabric generally available, helping customers like Millman and PwC go from data to insights to action, all within the same unified SaaS solution. Data stored in Fabric's multi-cloud data lake, One Lake, increased 46% quarter over quarter. Now on to developers. From GitHub to Visual Studio, we have the most comprehensive and loved developer tools for the era of AI. GitHub revenue accelerated to over 40% year over year, driven by all-up platform growth and adoption of GitHub Copilot, the world's most widely deployed AI developer tool. We now have over 1.3 million paid GitHub Copilot subscribers, up 30% quarter over quarter, and more than 50,000 organizations use GitHub Copilot business to supercharge the productivity of their developers from digital natives like Etsy and HelloFresh to to leading enterprises like Autodesk, Dell Technologies, and Goldman Sachs. Accenture alone will roll out GitHub Copilot to 50,000 of its developers this year. And we're going further, making Copilot ubiquitous across the entire GitHub platform and new AI-powered security features, as well as Copilot Enterprise, which tailors Copilot to organizations' codebases and allows developers to converse with it in natural language. We're also the leader in low-code, no-code development, helping everyone create apps, automate workflows, analyze data, and now build custom copilots. More than 230,000 organizations have already used AI capabilities in Power Platform, up over 80% quarter over quarter. And with Copilot Studio, organizations can tailor Copilot for Microsoft 365 or create their own custom copilots. It has already been used by over 10,000 organizations, including AndPost, Holland America, PG&E. In just weeks, for example, both PayPal and Tata Digital built co-pilots to answer common employee queries, increasing productivity, and reducing support costs. We're also using this AI moment to redefine our role in business applications. Dynamics 365 once again took share as organizations use our AI-powered apps to transform their marketing, sales, service, finance, and supply chain functions. And we are expanding our TAM by integrating Copilot into third-party systems too. In sales, our Copilot has helped sellers at more than 30,000 organizations, including Lumen Technologies and Schneider Electric, to enrich their customer interactions using data from Dynamics 365 or Salesforce. And with our new Copilot for Service, employees at companies like Northern Trust can resolve client queries faster. It includes out-of-the-box integrations to apps like Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Zendesk. With our industry and cross-industry clouds, we are tailoring our solutions to meet the needs of specific industries. In healthcare, DAX Copilot is being used by more than 100 healthcare systems, including Lifespan, UNC Health, and UPMC to increase physician productivity and reduce burnout. And our cloud for retail was front and center at NRF with retailers from Canadian Tire Corporation, to Leatherman and Ralph Lauren sharing how they will use our solutions across the shopper journey to accelerate time to value. Now on to future of work. A growing body of evidence makes clear the role AI will play in transforming work. Our own research as well as external studies show as much as 70% improvement in productivity using generative AI for specific work tasks. And overall, early copilot for Microsoft 365 users were 29% faster in a series of tasks like searching, writing, and summarizing. Two months in, we have seen faster adoption than either our E3 or E5 suites as enterprises like Dentsu, Honda, Pfizer all deploy copilot to their employees. And we are expanding availability to organizations of all sizes. We're also seeing a co-pilot ecosystem begin to emerge. ISVs like Atlassian, Mural, and Trello, as well as customers like Air India, Bayer, and Siemens have all built plugins for specific lines of business that extend co-pilot's capabilities. When it comes to teams, we again saw record usage as organizations brought together collaboration, chat, meetings, and calling on one platform. and Teams has also become a new entry point for us. More than two-thirds of our enterprise Teams customers buy phone rooms or premium. All this innovation is driving growth across Microsoft 365, We now have more than 400 million paid Office 365 seats, and organizations like BP, Elenco, ING Bank, Mediaset, WTW all chose E5 this quarter to empower their employees with our best-in-class productivity apps, along with advanced security, compliance, voice, and analytics. Now on to Windows. In 2024, AI will become first-class part of every PC. Windows PCs with built-in neural processing units were front and center at CES, unlocking new AI experiences to make what you do on your PC easier and faster from searching for answers and summarizing emails to optimizing performance and battery efficiency. Copilot in Windows is already available on more than 75 million Windows 10 and Windows 11 PCs, and with our new Copilot key, the first significant change to the Windows keyboard in 30 years, we're providing one-click access. We also continue to transform how Windows is experienced and managed with Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365, introducing new features that make it simpler for employees to access and IT teams to secure their cloud PCs. Usage of cloud-delivered Windows increased over 50% year-over-year. And all up, Windows 11 commercial deployments increased 2x year-over-year as companies like HPE and Petrobras rolled out operating systems to employees. Now on to security. The recent security attacks, including the nation-state attack on our corporate systems we reported a week and a half ago, have highlighted the urgent need for organizations to move even faster to protect themselves from cyber threats. It's why last fall we announced a set of engineering priorities under our Secure Future initiative, bringing together every part of the company to advance cybersecurity protection across both new products and legacy infrastructure. And it's why we continue to innovate across our security portfolio as well as our operational security posture to help customers adopt a zero-trust security architecture. Our industry-first unified security operations platform brings together our SIEM, Microsoft Sentinel, our XDR, Microsoft Defender, and Copilot for Security to help teams manage an increasingly complex security landscape. And with Copilot for Security, we are now helping hundreds of early access customers, including customers CMEX, Dow, LTI Minetree, McAfee, Nucor Steel significantly increased their SecOps team's productivity. This quarter, we extended co-pilot to Entra, Intune, and Purview. All up, we have over 1 million customers, including more than 700,000 who use four or more of our security products, like Arrow Electronics, DXC Technology, Freeport McMoran, Insight Enterprises, J.B. Hunt, and the Mosaic Company. Now on to LinkedIn. LinkedIn is now helping over 1 billion members learn, sell, and get hired. We continue to see strong global membership growth driven by member signups in key markets like Germany and India. In an ever-changing job market, members are staying competitive through skill building and knowledge sharing. Over the last 12 months, members have added 680 million skills to their profiles, up 80% year over year. Our new AI-powered features are transforming the LinkedIn member experience, everything from how people learn new skills to how they search for jobs and engage with posts. New AI features, including more personalized in-mails, also continue to increase business ROI on the platform, and our hiring business took share for the sixth consecutive quarter. And more broadly, AI is transforming our search and browser experience. We are encouraged by the momentum. Earlier this month, we achieved a new milestone with 5 billion images created and 5 billion chats conducted to date, both doubling quarter over quarter, and both Bing and Edge took share this quarter. We also introduced Copilot as a standalone destination across all browsers and devices, as well as a Copilot app on iOS and Android. And just two weeks ago, we introduced Copilot Pro, providing access to the latest models for quick answers and high-quality image creation and access to Copilot for Microsoft 365 personal and family subscribers. Now on to gaming. This quarter, we set all-time records for monthly active users on Xbox, PC, as well as mobile, where we now have over 200 million monthly active users alone, inclusive of Activision Blizzard King. With our acquisition, we have added hundreds of millions of gamers to our ecosystem as we execute on our ambition to reach more gamers on more platforms. With cloud gaming, we continue to innovate to offer players more ways to experience the games they love, where and when and how they want. Our stream increased 44% year over year. Great content is key to our growth and across our portfolio, I've never been more excited about our lineup of upcoming games. Earlier this month, we shared exciting new first-party titles coming this year to Xbox, PC, and Game Pass, including Indiana Jones. And we've also announced launching significant updates this calendar year to many of our most durable franchises, which brings in millions of players each month, including Call of Duty, Elder Scrolls Online, and Starfield. In closing, we are looking forward to how AI-driven transformation will benefit people and organizations in 2024. With that, I'll hand it over to Amy.