By Joe Robinson 29 Jan 2020

REDMOND, Wash. — Jan. 29, 2020 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the following results for the quarter ended December 31, 2019, as compared to the corresponding period of last fiscal year:

• Revenue was $36.9 billion and increased 14%
• Operating income was $13.9 billion and increased 35%
• Net income was $11.6 billion and increased 38% GAAP and 36% non-GAAP
• Diluted earnings per share was $1.51 and increased 40% GAAP and 37% non-GAAP

“We are innovating across every layer of our differentiated technology stack and leading in key secular areas that are critical to our customers’ success,” said Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft. “Along with our expanding opportunity, we are working to ensure the technology we build is inclusive, trusted and creates a more sustainable world, so every person and every organization can benefit.”

The following table reconciles our financial results reported in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) to non-GAAP financial results. Additional information regarding our non-GAAP definition is provided below. All growth comparisons relate to the corresponding period in the last fiscal year.

GAAP results include a net income tax charge related to the TCJA of $157 million for the second quarter of fiscal year 2019. This net income tax charge is excluded from our non-GAAP results.

Microsoft returned $8.5 billion to shareholders in the form of share repurchases and dividends in the second quarter of fiscal year 2020.

“Strong execution from our sales teams and partners drove Commercial Cloud revenue to $12.5 billion, up 39% year over year,” said Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft.

Revenue in Productivity and Business Processes was $11.8 billion and increased 17% (up 19% in constant currency), with the following business highlights:

• Office Commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 16% (up 18% in constant currency) driven by Office 365 Commercial revenue growth of 27% (up 30% in constant currency)
• Office Consumer products and cloud services revenue increased 19% (up 20% in constant currency) with continued growth in Office 365 Consumer subscribers to 37.2 million
• LinkedIn revenue increased 24% (up 26% in constant currency)
• Dynamics products and cloud services revenue increased 12% (up 15% in constant currency) driven by Dynamics 365 revenue growth of 42% (up 45% in constant currency)

Revenue in Intelligent Cloud was $11.9 billion and increased 27% (up 28% in constant currency), with the following business highlights:

• Server products and cloud services revenue increased 30% (up 32% in constant currency) driven by Azure revenue growth of 62% (up 64% in constant currency)
• Enterprise Services revenue increased 6% (up 7% in constant currency)

Revenue in More Personal Computing was $13.2 billion and increased 2% (up 3% in constant currency), with the following business highlights:

• Windows OEM revenue increased 18% (up 18% in constant currency)
• Windows Commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 25% (up 27% in constant currency)
• Surface revenue increased 6% (up 8% in constant currency)
• Search advertising revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs increased 6% (up 7% in constant currency)
• Xbox content and services revenue decreased 11% (down 9% in constant currency)

Business Outlook

Microsoft will provide forward-looking guidance in connection with this quarterly earnings announcement on its earnings conference call and webcast.

Quarterly Highlights, Product Releases, and Enhancements  

Every quarter Microsoft delivers hundreds of products, either as new releases, services, or enhancements to current products and services. These releases are a result of significant research and development investments, made over multiple years, designed to help customers be more productive and secure and to deliver differentiated value across the cloud and the edge.

Here are the major product releases and other highlights for the quarter, organized by product categories, to help illustrate how we are accelerating innovation across our businesses while expanding our market opportunities.

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)

To better execute on Microsoft’s mission, we focus our Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) efforts where we can have the most positive impact. To learn more about our latest initiatives and priorities, please visit our investor relations ESG website.

Webcast Details

Satya Nadella, chief executive officer, Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer, Frank Brod, chief accounting officer, Keith Dolliver, deputy general counsel, and Michael Spencer, general manager of investor relations, will host a conference call and webcast at 2:30 p.m. Pacific time (5:30 p.m. Eastern time) today to discuss details of the company’s performance for the quarter and certain forward-looking information. The session may be accessed at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor. The webcast will be available for replay through the close of business on January 29, 2021.

Non-GAAP Definition

We recorded a net charge of $157 million during the three months ended December 31, 2018 related to the TCJA.

We have provided non-GAAP financial measures related to the TCJA to aid investors in better understanding our performance. We believe these non-GAAP measures assist investors by providing additional insight into our operational performance and help clarify trends affecting our business. For comparability of reporting, management considers non-GAAP measures in conjunction with GAAP financial results in evaluating business performance. The non-GAAP financial measures presented in this release should not be considered as a substitute for, or superior to, the measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP.

Constant Currency

Microsoft presents constant currency information to provide a framework for assessing how our underlying businesses performed excluding the effect of foreign currency rate fluctuations. To present this information, current and comparative prior period results for entities reporting in currencies other than United States dollars are converted into United States dollars using the average exchange rates from the comparative period rather than the actual exchange rates in effect during the respective periods. All growth comparisons relate to the corresponding period in the last fiscal year. Microsoft has provided this non-GAAP financial information to aid investors in better understanding our performance. The non-GAAP financial measures presented in this release should not be considered as a substitute for, or superior to, the measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP.

Financial Performance Constant Currency Reconciliation

Segment Revenue Constant Currency Reconciliation

 Selected Product and Service Revenue Constant Currency Reconciliation           

About Microsoft

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

Forward-Looking Statements

Statements in this release that are “forward-looking statements” are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially because of factors such as:

• intense competition in all of our markets that may lead to lower revenue or operating margins;
• increasing focus on cloud-based services presenting execution and competitive risks;
• significant investments in products and services that may not achieve expected returns;
• acquisitions, joint ventures, and strategic alliances that may have an adverse effect on our business;
• impairment of goodwill or amortizable intangible assets causing a significant charge to earnings;
• cyberattacks and security vulnerabilities that could lead to reduced revenue, increased costs, liability claims, or harm to our reputation or competitive position;
• disclosure and misuse of personal data that could cause liability and harm to our reputation;
• the possibility that we may not be able to protect information stored in our products and services from use by others;
• abuse of our advertising or social platforms that may harm our reputation or user engagement;
• the development of the internet of things presenting security, privacy, and execution risks;
• issues about the use of AI in our offerings that may result in competitive harm, legal liability, or reputational harm;
• excessive outages, data losses, and disruptions of our online services if we fail to maintain an adequate operations infrastructure;
• quality or supply problems;
• the possibility that we may fail to protect our source code;
• legal changes, our evolving business model, piracy, and other factors may decrease the value of our intellectual property;
• claims that Microsoft has infringed the intellectual property rights of others;
• claims against us that may result in adverse outcomes in legal disputes;
• government litigation and regulatory activity relating to competition rules that may limit how we design and market our products;
• potential liability under trade protection, anti-corruption, and other laws resulting from our global operations;
• laws and regulations relating to the handling of personal data that may impede the adoption of our services or result in increased costs, legal claims, fines, or reputational damage;
• additional tax liabilities;
• damage to our reputation or our brands that may harm our business and operating results;
• exposure to increased economic and operational uncertainties from operating a global business, including the effects of foreign currency exchange;
• uncertainties relating to our business with government customers;
• adverse economic or market conditions that may harm our business;
• catastrophic events or geo-political conditions that may disrupt our business; and
• the dependence of our business on our ability to attract and retain talented employees.

For more information about risks and uncertainties associated with Microsoft’s business, please refer to the “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and “Risk Factors” sections of Microsoft’s SEC filings, including, but not limited to, its annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, copies of which may be obtained by contacting Microsoft’s Investor Relations department at (800) 285-7772 or at Microsoft’s Investor Relations website at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor.

All information in this release is as of December 31, 2019. The company undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statement to conform the statement to actual results or changes in the company’s expectations.

For more information, press only:

Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, (425) 638-7777, rrt@we-worldwide.com

For more information, financial analysts and investors only:

Michael Spencer, General Manager, Investor Relations, (425) 706-4400

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers, and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. Shareholder and financial information, as well as today’s 2:30 p.m. Pacific time conference call with investors and analysts, is available at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor.

COPR is a collection of personal repositories for software that isn’t carried in Fedora. Some software doesn’t conform to standards that allow easy packaging. Or it may not meet other Fedora standards, despite being free and open source. COPR can offer these projects outside the Fedora set of packages. Software in COPR isn’t supported by Fedora infrastructure or signed by the project. However, it can be a neat way to try new or experimental software.

This article presents a few new and interesting projects in COPR. If you’re new to using COPR, see the COPR User Documentation for how to get started.

Contrast

Contrast is a small app used for checking contrast between two colors and to determine if it meets the requirements specified in WCAG. The colors can be selected either using their RGB hex codes or with a color picker tool. In addition to showing the contrast ratio, Contrast displays a short text on a background in selected colors to demonstrate comparison.

Installation instructions

The repo currently provides contrast for Fedora 31 and Rawhide. To install Contrast, use these commands:

sudo dnf copr enable atim/contrast

sudo dnf install contrast

Pamixer

Pamixer is a command-line tool for adjusting and monitoring volume levels of sound devices using PulseAudio. You can display the current volume of a device and either set it directly or increase/decrease it, or (un)mute it. Pamixer can list all sources and sinks.

Installation instructions

The repo currently provides Pamixer for Fedora 31 and Rawhide. To install Pamixer, use these commands:

sudo dnf copr enable opuk/pamixer

sudo dnf install pamixer

PhotoFlare

PhotoFlare is an image editor. It has a simple and well-arranged user interface, where most of the features are available in the toolbars. PhotoFlare provides features such as various color adjustments, image transformations, filters, brushes and automatic cropping, although it doesn’t support working with layers. Also, PhotoFlare can edit pictures in batches, applying the same filters and transformations on all pictures and storing the results in a specified directory.

Installation instructions

The repo currently provides PhotoFlare for Fedora 31. To install Photoflare, use these commands:

sudo dnf copr enable adriend/photoflare

sudo dnf install photoflare

Tdiff

Tdiff is a command-line tool for comparing two file trees. In addition to showing that some files or directories exist in one tree only, tdiff shows differences in file sizes, types and contents, owner user and group ids, permissions, modification time and more.

Installation instructions

The repo currently provides tdiff for Fedora 29-31 and Rawhide, EPEL 6-8 and other distributions. To install tdiff, use these commands:

sudo dnf copr enable fif/tdiff sudo dnf install tdiff

The Sonic the Hedgehog movie is rapidly approaching and a number of complete scenes are starting to find their way online. If you want a sneak peek at the film before you head off to the cinema, sit back and enjoy these clips.

We start with this one, where Sonic confronts Dr. Robotnik and kicks his friends off the roof of a super-high building. As you do.

Next up, Fluffy Sonic!

And finally, a scene called ‘This One is Cute’, where Sonic and Tom find themselves in a pretty sticky situation.

What do you think? Are you enjoying the humour? Do you think Sonic’s redesign is looking good? The film arrives in theatres on 14th February – so that’s just a couple of weeks away!

The health of people and communities around the world has been improving over time. For example, the steep decline in child and maternal mortality is a key indicator of positive momentum.

However, progress has not been equal across the globe, and there is a great need to focus on societal issues such as reducing health inequity and improving access to care for underserved populations. While researchers work to unlock life-saving discoveries and develop new approaches to pressing health issues, advancements in technology can help accelerate and scale new solutions.

That is why we are launching AI for Health, a new $40 million, five-year program to empower researchers and organizations with AI to improve the health of people and communities around the world. The program is underpinned with a strong foundation of privacy, security and ethics, and was developed in collaboration with leading health experts who are driving important medical initiatives. AI for Health is the fifth Microsoft AI for Good program, a $165 million initiative to empower researchers, nonprofits and organizations with advanced technologies to help unlock solutions to the biggest challenges facing society today.

The AI for Health initiative will focus on three key areas:

• Quest for discovery. Accelerating medical research to advance prevention, diagnoses and treatment of diseases
• Global health insights. Increasing our shared understanding of mortality and longevity to protect against global health crises
• Health equity. Reducing health inequity and improving access to care for underserved populations

AI for Health is a philanthropic initiative that complements our broader work in Microsoft Healthcare. Through AI for Health, we will support specific nonprofits and academic collaboration with Microsoft’s leading data scientists, access to best-in-class AI tools and cloud computing, and select cash grants.

I am honored to lead AI for Health as part of my mission at Microsoft to fuse AI and data to address the world’s greatest challenges. As a tech company, it is our responsibility to ensure that organizations working on the most pressing societal issues have access to our latest AI technology and the expertise of our technical talent.

The Role of AI in Health

Over the last 30 years, health professionals around the world have reduced the number of annual child and maternal deaths by half. This monumental achievement demonstrates that great progress can be made when the global health community works together to create positive change, but we have an opportunity go further, to accelerate research and scale new solutions. This is where AI for Health can help.

While great progress has been made in reducing child and maternal mortality, these improvements have not been equal across the globe. For example, Finland’s child mortality rate is 43.7 compared to Somalia’s at 1,899.2 per 100,000 live births, and the U.S. maternal mortality rate is 29.9 compared to Chad’s at 383.3 per 100,000 live births. Even in countries such as the U.S. that have made great progress in reducing child mortality, the probability of a child surviving to their fifth birthday depends heavily on the zip code where that child was born and varies dramatically by demographics.

There are real health issues in which AI can play an important role, and it may be our best option to accelerate research or expand the reach of new solutions, especially in areas that may lack attention from the commercial health sector.

For example, technology can help scale screenings for diabetic retinopathy – an issue facing 463 million people – to expand the reach of ophthalmologists, as there are only 210,000 in the world. Or in cases such as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), where it is tough for organizations to invest in research given the size of the affected population, but there are huge knock-on effects to better understand and mitigate against general infant death.

But to truly make an impact, we need to make sure that medical experts and researchers have access to the best technical talent possible, people who can provide their expertise to get the most value out of technology. Currently, AI talent is disproportionately concentrated in the tech industry.

More than 50% of AI professionals work in tech, and less than 5% are operating within the health and nonprofit sectors. As a result, medical researchers are hampered due to AI talent shortages worldwide.

To succeed, we recognize there must be a balance between privacy and innovation. Therefore, we are working hard to deliver advanced privacy technologies based on the work Microsoft and academic researchers invented years ago, called differential privacy, which makes it possible to extract useful insights from datasets while guaranteeing the privacy of individuals. This is being undertaken in collaboration with Microsoft and Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science.

At Microsoft and across the tech industry, we also have a responsibility to ensure that new technology is human-centered and developed in a manner consistent with broadly held societal values. We are taking a principled and transparent approach to the development of technology, and we are hopeful the world will see what a compelling force for good AI can be when it’s used responsibly in partnership with innovative organizations.

Empowering Grantees

Microsoft has a unique opportunity to extend its contribution to the world by dedicating data science expertise, technology and resources to help solve pressing health issues. The AI for Health program will operate via collaborations that leverage our best AI tools and technical expertise from Microsoft to further quests for medical discovery, uncover global health insights and increase health equity across underserved populations. A handful of our current projects include:

We are also deepening our explorative partnerships with three leading nonprofits –  BRAC, PATH and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital – to propel additional advancements in the important fields of maternal mortality, tuberculosis treatment and pediatric cancer.

You can explore the below Power BI, an interactive visual analysis of global health information.

We look forward to working with researchers, academics, nonprofits, health industry professionals and policymakers around the world as we accelerate research and insights, such as the work we have undertaken in the SIDS space to improve data quality and collection with the Scarlett’s Sunshine on Unexpected Death Act. Together, we can improve the health of people and communities globally.

Tags: AI, AI for Good, AI for Health, artificial intelligence

News | Bungie.net”> News | Bungie.net”>

PlayStation Xbox Live Steam Stadia Battle.net

Mojang brings fixes with this latest release.  Those on the Nintendo Switch will have to wait just a bit longer before you receive this update.

• Crashes / Performance
  
  • Fixed several crashes that could occur during gameplay
  • Fixed several crashes that could occur when loading into world on Nintendo Switch
  • Placing a compass and locator map in the crafting grid no longer causes the game to crash (MCPE-57882)
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when travelling through a Nether Portal with another entity (MCPE-58568)
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when converting a world with fireworks equipped in a crossbow
  • Fixed a crash that could occur with raids on converted worlds
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when loading the ‘Extreme Speed Runner’ Marketplace world on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One

• General
  
  • Classic skin choices no longer revert after reloading the game (MCPE-55278)
  • Fixed .mcworld and .mctemplate files not importing on devices running iOS 13
  • Fixed the LittleBigPlanet world and textures not being usable if the game was installed from disc
  • Fixed issues with the ‘Chroma Hills’ texture pack not loading on Nintendo Switch
  • Split-screen players can no longer be left in a limbo state when joining the game while the primary player quits at the same time

• Gameplay
  
  • Projectiles can now be shot through the gap between two honey blocks
  • Players no longer bounce when being pushed and pulled by honey blocks and pistons (MCPE-53815)

• Mobs
  
  • Fixed an issue that prevented mobs from spawning under transparent blocks (MCPE-59682)
    
    • Please note, that this fix will revert the changes made in MCPE-54241, which will require further work and will be fixed in a future update
  • Bees no longer fly in and out of a beehive or nest that is on fire (MCPE-53872)
  • Fixed tamed wolves not breeding by increasing their breeding priority (MCPE-59570)
  • Tamed parrots sitting on the player’s shoulder are now transitioned after world conversion
  • Fixed Pillagers not attacking players after world conversion
  • Fixed players not obtaining Bad Omen when killing a Pillager Captain after world conversion

• Items
  
  • Tridents no longer bounce continuously on the sides of honey blocks (MCPE-53626)
  • Honey Bottles now show the proper item tooltip (MCPE-61195)
  • Undyed Shulker Boxes now retain their color after world conversion (MCPE-36744)

• User Interface
  
  • A confirmation prompt now appears if purchasing Realms on Nintendo Switch
  • Fixed an issue that could cause text to overlap when using different window resolutions in the Marketplace

• Commands
  
  • Beehives and bee nests now have proper textures when placed with the ‘/setblock’ command
  • Defining an execute location no longer breaks the “detect” argument

• Add-Ons
  
  • Fixed an issue that could sometimes prevent Behavior Pack animations from working on Android (MCPE-56117)
  • The sensing component (used for ranged attacks) now calculates the view direction like it used to, making it so mobs can see their target on the y-axis
  • Fixed an issue that was preventing players from being teleported and rotated smoothly
  • Fixed the order of ‘on_exit’ and ‘on_entry’ events being reversed in animation controller state transitions
  • Local space for particles attached to entities will once again inherit the locator’s bone rotation

All versions of 1.14 are compatible with multiplayer.  Happy gaming!