Microsoft Corp shares rose about 5 percent to an all-time high on Friday, after investors cheered another blockbuster quarter, backed by growth in its legacy software business and Azure cloud computing services, IBT Times reports.
Shares of one of the technology world's oldest and best-known names rose nearly 4 percent to $108.20 in early trade, adding more than $30 billion to a market capitalization that was already $802 billion at Thursday's close. At least six brokerages raised their price targets on the company's stock after the results.
Helped by a boom in demand for cloud-based software, Microsoft has more than doubled in value since Satya Nadella took over as chief executive in 2014 and refocused the software behemoth on newer businesses. While Microsoft's core productivity and business processes unit, which includes the Office 365 software suite, rose 13.1 percent to $9.67 billion, revenue for the Azure cloud service jumped 89 percent.
