Microsoft Corp saw its net income nearly double from a year ago, but revenue fell short of Wall Street forecasts because of leaner licensing business and a sharp drop in the dollar's value.
In its fiscal third quarter, ending March 31, the Redmond-based software maker said on Thursday it earned US$2.56 billion, or US$0.23 per share, up from US$1.32 billion, or 12 cents per share, a year ago.
The results included legal charges of US$0.05 per share, down from US$0.17 a share in the same period last year, and a US$0.04 charge for the expense of stock-based employee compensation -- required by new accounting rules.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial were looking for the company to post earnings of US$0.32 per share on sales of US$9.83 billion in the latest quarter. The company would have met earnings projections, except for the legal and stock-based compensation charges.
Revenue rose 5 percent, from US$9.18 billion to US$9.62 billion, short of analysts' estimates.
Microsoft blamed the shortfall primarily on a greater-than-expected decline in commercial and retail licensing for Windows and an unfavorable exchange rate in the past few months.
"We had a good quarter overall with some real strong growth out of our server and tools business," said Scott Di Valerio, Microsoft's corporate vice president and controller. That unit posted a profit of US$824 million on revenue of US$2.44 billion, up about 33 percent from earnings of US$616 million on revenue of US$2.2 billion in the year-ago period.
"Despite a mixed enterprise software environment, the quarter played out largely as we expected and operating income and earnings per share results were in line with our expectations," Di Valerio said in a statement.
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