MSFT 10-K diff: FY 2023-06-30 → FY 2024-06-30
Paragraph-level diff of Risk Factors (Item 1A) and Management's Discussion & Analysis (Item 7).
Item 1A · Risk Factors
+72 paragraphs −71 paragraphs ~71 changed
FY 2023-06-30 (earlier)
Item 1A
ITEM 1A. RIS K FACTORSOur operations and financial results are subject to various risks and uncertainties, including those described below, that could adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations, cash flows, and the trading price of our common stock.STRATEGIC AND COMPETITIVE RISKSWe face intense competition across all markets for our products and services, which may lead to lower revenue or operating margins.Competition in the technology sectorOur competitors range in size from diversified global companies with significant research and development resources to small, specialized firms whose narrower product lines may let them be more effective in deploying technical, marketing, and financial resources. Barriers to entry in many of our businesses are low and many of the areas in which we compete evolve rapidly with changing and disruptive technologies, shifting user needs, and frequent introductions of new products and services. Our ability to remain competitive depends on our success in making innovative products, devices, and services that appeal to businesses and consumers.Competition among platform-based ecosystems
An important element of our business model has been to create platform-based ecosystems on which many participants can build diverse solutions. A well-established ecosystem creates beneficial network effects among users, application developers, and the platform provider that can accelerate growth. Establishing significant scale in the marketplace is necessary to achieve and maintain attractive margins. We face significant competition from firms that provide competing platforms.• A competing vertically-integrated model, in which a single firm controls the software and hardware elements of a product and related services, has succeeded with some consumer products such as personal computers, tablets, phones, gaming consoles, wearables, and other endpoint devices. Competitors pursuing this model also earn revenue from services integrated with the hardware and software platform, including applications and content sold through their integrated marketplaces. They may also be able to claim security and performance benefits from their vertically integrated offer. We also offer some vertically-integrated hardware and software products and services. To the extent we shift a portion of our business to a vertically integrated model we increase our cost of revenue and reduce our operating margins.
• We derive substantial revenue from licenses of Windows operating systems on PCs. We face significant competition from competing platforms developed for new devices and form factors such as smartphones and tablet computers. These devices compete on multiple bases including price and the perceived utility of the device and its platform. Users are increasingly turning to these devices to perform functions that in the past were performed by personal computers. Even if many users view these devices as complementary to a personal computer, the prevalence of these devices may make it more difficult to attract application developers to our PC operating system platforms. Competing with operating systems licensed at low or no cost may decrease our PC operating system margins. Popular products or services offered on competing platforms could increase their competitive strength. In addition, some of our devices compete with products made by our original equipment manufacturer (“OEM”) partners, which may affect their commitment to our platform.• Competing platforms have content and application marketplaces with scale and significant installed bases. The variety and utility of content and applications available on a platform are important to device purchasing decisions. Users may incur costs to move data and buy new content and applications when switching platforms. To compete, we must successfully enlist developers to write applications for our platform and ensure that these applications have high quality, security, customer appeal, and value. Efforts to compete with competitors’ content and application marketplaces may increase our cost of revenue and lower our operating margins. Competitors’ rules governing their content and applications marketplaces may restrict our ability to distribute products and services through them in accordance with our technical and business model objectives.23PART I
Item 1ABusiness model competition
Companies compete with us based on a growing variety of business models.• Even as we transition more of our business to infrastructure-, platform-, and software-as-a-service business model, the license-based proprietary software model generates a substantial portion of our software revenue. We bear the costs of converting original ideas into software products through investments in research and development, offsetting these costs with the revenue received from licensing our products. Many of our competitors also develop and sell software to businesses and consumers under this model.• We are investing in artificial intelligence (“AI”) across the entire company and infusing generative AI capabilities into our consumer and commercial offerings. We expect AI technology and services to be a highly competitive and rapidly evolving market. We will bear significant development and operational costs to build and support the AI capabilities, products, and services necessary to meet the needs of our customers. To compete effectively we must also be responsive to technological change, potential regulatory developments, and public scrutiny.
• Other competitors develop and offer free applications, online services, and content, and make money by selling third-party advertising. Advertising revenue funds development of products and services these competitors provide to users at no or little cost, competing directly with our revenue-generating products.• Some companies compete with us by modifying and then distributing open source software at little or no cost to end users, using open source AI models, and earning revenue on advertising or integrated products and services. These firms do not bear the full costs of research and development for the open source products. Some open source products mimic the features and functionality of our products.The competitive pressures described above may cause decreased sales volumes, price reductions, and/or increased operating costs, such as for research and development, marketing, and sales incentives. This may lead to lower revenue, gross margins, and operating income.
Our increasing focus on cloud-based services presents execution and competitive risks. A growing part of our business involves cloud-based services available across the spectrum of computing devices. Our strategic vision is to compete and grow by building best-in-class platforms and productivity services that utilize ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence to drive insights and productivity gains. At the same time, our competitors are rapidly developing and deploying cloud-based services for consumers and business customers. Pricing and delivery models are evolving. Devices and form factors influence how users access services in the cloud and sometimes the user’s choice of which cloud-based services to use. Certain industries and customers have specific requirements for cloud services and may present enhanced risks. We are devoting significant resources to develop and deploy our cloud-based strategies. The Windows ecosystem must continue to evolve with this changing environment. We embrace cultural and organizational changes to drive accountability and eliminate obstacles to innovation. Our intelligent cloud and intelligent edge offerings are connected to the growth of the Internet of Things (“IoT”), a network of distributed and interconnected devices employing sensors, data, and computing capabilities, including AI. Our success in driving ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence will depend on the level of adoption of our offerings such as Azure, Azure AI, and Azure IoT Edge. We may not establish market share sufficient to achieve scale necessary to meet our business objectives.
Besides software development costs, we are incurring costs to build and maintain infrastructure to support cloud computing services. These costs will reduce the operating margins we have previously achieved. Whether we succeed in cloud-based services depends on our execution in several areas, including:
• Continuing to bring to market compelling cloud-based experiences that generate increasing traffic and market share.
• Maintaining the utility, compatibility, and performance of our cloud-based services on the growing array of computing devices, including PCs, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other devices, as well as sensors and other IoT endpoints.• Continuing to enhance the attractiveness of our cloud platforms to third-party developers.• Ensuring our cloud-based services meet the reliability expectations of our customers and maintain the security of their data as well as help them meet their own compliance needs.• Making our suite of cloud-based services platform-agnostic, available on a wide range of devices and ecosystems, including those of our competitors.24PART I
Item 1AIt is uncertain whether our strategies will attract the users or generate the revenue required to succeed. If we are not effective in executing organizational and technical changes to increase efficiency and accelerate innovation, or if we fail to generate sufficient usage of our new products and services, we may not grow revenue in line with the infrastructure and development investments described above. This may negatively impact gross margins and operating income.
Some users may engage in fraudulent or abusive activities through our cloud-based services. These include unauthorized use of accounts through stolen credentials, use of stolen credit cards or other payment vehicles, failure to pay for services accessed, or other activities that violate our terms of service such as cryptocurrency mining or launching cyberattacks. If our efforts to detect such violations or our actions to control these types of fraud and abuse are not effective, we may experience adverse impacts to our revenue or incur reputational damage.RISKS RELATING TO THE EVOLUTION OF OUR BUSINESSWe make significant investments in products and services that may not achieve expected returns. We will continue to make significant investments in research, development, and marketing for existing products, services, and technologies, including the Windows operating system, Microsoft 365, Bing, SQL Server, Windows Server, Azure, Office 365, Xbox, LinkedIn, and other products and services. In addition, we are focused on developing new AI platform services and incorporating AI into existing products and services. We also invest in the development and acquisition of a variety of hardware for productivity, communication, and entertainment, including PCs, tablets, gaming devices, and HoloLens. Investments in new technology are speculative. Commercial success depends on many factors, including innovativeness, developer support, and effective distribution and marketing. If customers do not perceive our latest offerings as providing significant new functionality or other value, they may reduce their purchases of new software and hardware products or upgrades, unfavorably affecting revenue. We may not achieve significant revenue from new product, service, and distribution channel investments for several years, if at all. New products and services may not be profitable, and even if they are profitable, operating margins for some new products and businesses will not be as high as the margins we have experienced historically. We may not get engagement in certain features, like Microsoft Edge, Bing, and Bing Chat, that drive post-sale monetization opportunities. Our data handling practices across our products and services will continue to be under scrutiny. Perceptions of mismanagement, driven by regulatory activity or negative public reaction to our practices or product experiences, could negatively impact product and feature adoption, product design, and product quality.
Developing new technologies is complex. It can require long development and testing periods. Significant delays in new releases or significant problems in creating new products or services could adversely affect our revenue.
Acquisitions, joint ventures, and strategic alliances may have an adverse effect on our business. We expect to continue making acquisitions and entering into joint ventures and strategic alliances as part of our long-term business strategy. For example, in March 2021 we completed our acquisition of ZeniMax Media Inc. for $8.1 billion, and in March 2022 we completed our acquisition of Nuance Communications, Inc. for $18.8 billion. In January 2022 we announced a definitive agreement to acquire Activision Blizzard , Inc. for $68.7 billion. In January 2023 we announced the third phase of our OpenAI strategic partnership. Acquisitions and other transactions and arrangements involve significant challenges and risks, including that they do not advance our business strategy, that we get an unsatisfactory return on our investment, that they raise new compliance-related obligations and challenges, that we have difficulty integrating and retaining new employees, business systems, and technology, that they distract management from our other businesses, or that announced transactions may not be completed. If an arrangement fails to adequately anticipate changing circumstances and interests of a party, it may result in early termination or renegotiation of the arrangement. The success of these transactions and arrangements will depend in part on our ability to leverage them to enhance our existing products and services or develop compelling new ones, as well as acquired companies’ ability to meet our policies and processes in areas such as data governance, privacy, and cybersecurity. It may take longer than expected to realize the full benefits from these transactions and arrangements such as increased revenue or enhanced efficiencies, or the benefits may ultimately be smaller than we expected. These events could adversely affect our consolidated financial statements.
25PART I
Item 1AIf our goodwill or amortizable intangible assets become impaired, we may be required to record a significant charge to earnings. We acquire other companies and intangible assets and may not realize all the economic benefit from those acquisitions, which could cause an impairment of goodwill or intangibles. We review our amortizable intangible assets for impairment when events or changes in circumstances indicate the carrying value may not be recoverable. We test goodwill for impairment at least annually. Factors that may be a change in circumstances, indicating that the carrying value of our goodwill or amortizable intangible assets may not be recoverable, include a decline in our stock price and market capitalization, reduced future cash flow estimates, and slower growth rates in industry segments in which we participate. We have in the past recorded, and may in the future be required to record, a significant charge in our consolidated financial statements during the period in which any impairment of our goodwill or amortizable intangible assets is determined, negatively affecting our results of operations.CYBERSECURITY, DATA PRIVACY, AND PLATFORM ABUSE RISKS
Cyberattacks and security vulnerabilities could lead to reduced revenue, increased costs, liability claims, or harm to our reputation or competitive position.
Security of our information technologyThreats to IT security can take a variety of forms. Individual and groups of hackers and sophisticated organizations, including state-sponsored organizations or nation-states, continuously undertake attacks that pose threats to our customers and our IT. These actors may use a wide variety of methods, which may include developing and deploying malicious software or exploiting vulnerabilities or intentionally designed processes in hardware, software, or other infrastructure in order to attack our products and services or gain access to our networks and datacenters, using social engineering techniques to induce our employees, users, partners, or customers to disclose passwords or other sensitive information or take other actions to gain access to our data or our users’ or customers’ data, or acting in a coordinated manner to launch distributed denial of service or other coordinated attacks. Nation-state and state-sponsored actors can deploy significant resources to plan and carry out attacks. Nation-state attacks against us, our customers, or our partners may intensify during periods of intense diplomatic or armed conflict, such as the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Inadequate account security or organizational security practices may also result in unauthorized access to confidential data. For example, system administrators may fail to timely remove employee account access when no longer appropriate. Employees or third parties may intentionally compromise our or our users’ security or systems or reveal confidential information. Malicious actors may employ the IT supply chain to introduce malware through software updates or compromised supplier accounts or hardware.
Cyberthreats are constantly evolving and becoming increasingly sophisticated and complex, increasing the difficulty of detecting and successfully defending against them. We may have no current capability to detect certain vulnerabilities or new attack methods, which may allow them to persist in the environment over long periods of time. Cyberthreats can have cascading impacts that unfold with increasing speed across our internal networks and systems and those of our partners and customers. Breaches of our facilities, network, or data security could disrupt the security of our systems and business applications, impair our ability to provide services to our customers and protect the privacy of their data, result in product development delays, compromise confidential or technical business information harming our reputation or competitive position, result in theft or misuse of our intellectual property or other assets, subject us to ransomware attacks, require us to allocate more resources to improve technologies or remediate the impacts of attacks, or otherwise adversely affect our business. We are also subject to supply chain cyberattacks where malware can be introduced to a software provider’s customers, including us, through software updates.
In addition, our internal IT environment continues to evolve. Often, we are early adopters of new devices and technologies. We embrace new ways of sharing data and communicating internally and with partners and customers using methods such as social networking and other consumer-oriented technologies. Increasing use of generative AI models in our internal systems may create new attack methods for adversaries. Our business policies and internal security controls may not keep pace with these changes as new threats emerge, or emerging cybersecurity regulations in jurisdictions worldwide.
26PART I
Item 1ASecurity of our products, services, devices, and customers’ dataThe security of our products and services is important in our customers’ decisions to purchase or use our products or services across cloud and on-premises environments. Security threats are a significant challenge to companies like us whose business is providing technology products and services to others. Threats to our own IT infrastructure can also affect our customers. Customers using our cloud-based services rely on the security of our infrastructure, including hardware and other elements provided by third parties, to ensure the reliability of our services and the protection of their data. Adversaries tend to focus their efforts on the most popular operating systems, programs, and services, including many of ours, and we expect that to continue. In addition, adversaries can attack our customers’ on-premises or cloud environments, sometimes exploiting previously unknown (“zero day”) vulnerabilities, such as occurred in early calendar year 2021 with several of our Exchange Server on-premises products. Vulnerabilities in these or any product can persist even after we have issued security patches if customers have not installed the most recent updates, or if the attackers exploited the vulnerabilities before patching to install additional malware to further compromise customers’ systems. Adversaries will continue to attack customers using our cloud services as customers embrace digital transformation. Adversaries that acquire user account information can use that information to compromise our users’ accounts, including where accounts share the same attributes such as passwords. Inadequate account security practices may also result in unauthorized access, and user activity may result in ransomware or other malicious software impacting a customer’s use of our products or services. We are increasingly incorporating open source software into our products. There may be vulnerabilities in open source software that may make our products susceptible to cyberattacks. Additionally, we are actively adding new generative AI features to our services. Because generative AI is a new field, understanding of security risks and protection methods continues to develop; features that rely on generative AI may be susceptible to unanticipated security threats from sophisticated adversaries.
Our customers operate complex IT systems with third-party hardware and software from multiple vendors that may include systems acquired over many years. They expect our products and services to support all these systems and products, including those that no longer incorporate the strongest current security advances or standards. As a result, we may not be able to discontinue support in our services for a product, service, standard, or feature solely because a more secure alternative is available. Failure to utilize the most current security advances and standards can increase our customers’ vulnerability to attack. Further, customers of widely varied size and technical sophistication use our technology, and consequently may still have limited capabilities and resources to help them adopt and implement state of the art cybersecurity practices and technologies. In addition, we must account for this wide variation of technical sophistication when defining default settings for our products and services, including security default settings, as these settings may limit or otherwise impact other aspects of IT operations and some customers may have limited capability to review and reset these defaults.Cyberattacks may adversely impact our customers even if our production services are not directly compromised. We are committed to notifying our customers whose systems have been impacted as we become aware and have actionable information for customers to help protect themselves. We are also committed to providing guidance and support on detection, tracking, and remediation. We may not be able to detect the existence or extent of these attacks for all of our customers or have information on how to detect or track an attack, especially where an attack involves on-premises software such as Exchange Server where we may have no or limited visibility into our customers’ computing environments.Development and deployment of defensive measuresTo defend against security threats to our internal IT systems, our cloud-based services, and our customers’ systems, we must continuously engineer more secure products and services, enhance security, threat detection, and reliability features, improve the deployment of software updates to address security vulnerabilities in our own products as well as those provided by others, develop mitigation technologies that help to secure customers from attacks even when software updates are not deployed, maintain the digital security infrastructure that protects the integrity of our network, products, and services, and provide security tools such as firewalls, anti-virus software, and advanced security and information about the need to deploy security measures and the impact of doing so. Customers in certain industries such as financial services, health care, and government may have enhanced or specialized requirements to which we must engineer our products and services.
27PART I
Item 1AThe cost of measures to protect products and customer-facing services could reduce our operating margins. If we fail to do these things well, actual or perceived security vulnerabilities in our products and services, data corruption issues, or reduced performance could harm our reputation and lead customers to reduce or delay future purchases of products or subscriptions to services, or to use competing products or services. Customers may also spend more on protecting their existing computer systems from attack, which could delay adoption of additional products or services. Customers, and third parties granted access to their systems, may fail to update their systems, continue to run software or operating systems we no longer support, or may fail timely to install or enable security patches, or may otherwise fail to adopt adequate security practices. Any of these could adversely affect our reputation and revenue. Actual or perceived vulnerabilities may lead to claims against us. Our license agreements typically contain provisions that eliminate or limit our exposure to liability, but there is no assurance these provisions will withstand legal challenges. At times, to achieve commercial objectives, we may enter into agreements with larger liability exposure to customers.
Our products operate in conjunction with and are dependent on products and components across a broad ecosystem of third parties. If there is a security vulnerability in one of these components, and if there is a security exploit targeting it, we could face increased costs, liability claims, reduced revenue, or harm to our reputation or competitive position.
Disclosure and misuse of personal data could result in liability and harm our reputation. As we continue to grow the number, breadth, and scale of our cloud-based offerings, we store and process increasingly large amounts of personal data of our customers and users. The continued occurrence of high-profile data breaches provides evidence of an external environment increasingly hostile to information security. Despite our efforts to improve the security controls across our business groups and geographies, it is possible our security controls over personal data, our training of employees and third parties on data security, and other practices we follow may not prevent the improper disclosure or misuse of customer or user data we or our vendors store and manage. In addition, third parties who have limited access to our customer or user data may use this data in unauthorized ways. Improper disclosure or misuse could harm our reputation, lead to legal exposure to customers or users, or subject us to liability under laws that protect personal data, resulting in increased costs or loss of revenue. Our software products and services also enable our customers and users to store and process personal data on-premises or, increasingly, in a cloud-based environment we host. Government authorities can sometimes require us to produce customer or user data in response to valid legal orders. In the U.S. and elsewhere, we advocate for transparency concerning these requests and appropriate limitations on government authority to compel disclosure. Despite our efforts to protect customer and user data, perceptions that the collection, use, and retention of personal information is not satisfactorily protected could inhibit sales of our products or services and could limit adoption of our cloud-based solutions by consumers, businesses, and government entities. Additional security measures we may take to address customer or user concerns, or constraints on our flexibility to determine where and how to operate datacenters in response to customer or user expectations or governmental rules or actions, may cause higher operating expenses or hinder growth of our products and services.
We may not be able to protect information in our products and services from use by others . LinkedIn and other Microsoft products and services contain valuable information and content protected by contractual restrictions or technical measures. In certain cases, we have made commitments to our members and users to limit access to or use of this information. Changes in the law or interpretations of the law may weaken our ability to prevent third parties from scraping or gathering information or content through use of bots or other measures and using it for their own benefit, thus diminishing the value of our products and services.Abuse of our platforms may harm our reputation or user engagement.
Advertising, professional, marketplace, and gaming platform abusesFor platform products and services that provide content or host ads that come from or can be influenced by third parties, including GitHub, LinkedIn, Microsoft Advertising, Microsoft News, Microsoft Store, Bing, and Xbox, our reputation or user engagement may be negatively affected by activity that is hostile or inappropriate. This activity may come from users impersonating other people or organizations including through the use of AI technologies, dissemination of information that may be viewed as misleading or intended to manipulate the opinions of our users, or the use of our products or services that violates our terms of service or otherwise for objectionable or illegal ends. Preventing or responding to these actions may require us to make substantial investments in people and technology and these investments may not be successful, adversely affecting our business and consolidated financial statements.
28
PART I
Item 1AOther digital safety abusesOur hosted consumer services as well as our enterprise services may be used to generate or disseminate harmful or illegal content in violation of our terms or applicable law. We may not proactively discover such content due to scale, the limitations of existing technologies, and conflicting legal frameworks. When discovered by users and others, such content may negatively affect our reputation, our brands, and user engagement. Regulations and other initiatives to make platforms responsible for preventing or eliminating harmful content online have been enacted, and we expect this to continue. We may be subject to enhanced regulatory oversight, civil or criminal liability, or reputational damage if we fail to comply with content moderation regulations, adversely affecting our business and consolidated financial statements.
The development of the IoT presents security, privacy, and execution risks. To support the growth of the intelligent cloud and the intelligent edge, we are developing products, services, and technologies to power the IoT. The IoT’s great potential also carries substantial risks. IoT products and services may contain defects in design, manufacture, or operation that make them insecure or ineffective for their intended purposes. An IoT solution has multiple layers of hardware, sensors, processors, software, and firmware, several of which we may not develop or control. Each layer, including the weakest layer, can impact the security of the whole system. Many IoT devices have limited interfaces and ability to be updated or patched. IoT solutions may collect large amounts of data, and our handling of IoT data may not satisfy customers or regulatory requirements. IoT scenarios may increasingly affect personal health and safety. If IoT solutions that include our technologies do not work as intended, violate the law, or harm individuals or businesses, we may be subject to legal claims or enforcement actions. These risks, if realized, may increase our costs, damage our reputation or brands, or negatively impact our revenues or margins.
Issues in the development and use of AI may result in reputational or competitive harm or liability . We are building AI into many of our offerings, including our productivity services, and we are also making AI available for our customers to use in solutions that they build. This AI may be developed by Microsoft or others, including our strategic partner, OpenAI. We expect these elements of our business to grow. We envision a future in which AI operating in our devices, applications, and the cloud helps our customers be more productive in their work and personal lives. As with many innovations, AI presents risks and challenges that could affect its adoption, and therefore our business. AI algorithms or training methodologies may be flawed. Datasets may be overbroad, insufficient, or contain biased information. Content generated by AI systems may be offensive, illegal, or otherwise harmful. Ineffective or inadequate AI development or deployment practices by Microsoft or others could result in incidents that impair the acceptance of AI solutions or cause harm to individuals, customers, or society, or result in our products and services not working as intended. Human review of certain outputs may be required. As a result of these and other challenges associated with innovative technologies, our implementation of AI systems could subject us to competitive harm, regulatory action, legal liability, including under new proposed legislation regulating AI in jurisdictions such as the European Union (“EU”), new applications of existing data protection, privacy, intellectual property, and other laws, and brand or reputational harm. Some AI scenarios present ethical issues or may have broad impacts on society. If we enable or offer AI solutions that have unintended consequences, unintended usage or customization by our customers and partners, or are controversial because of their impact on human rights, privacy, employment, or other social, economic, or political issues, we may experience brand or reputational harm, adversely affecting our business and consolidated financial statements.
29PART I
Item 1A
OPERATIONAL RISKSWe may have excessive outages, data losses, and disruptions of our online services if we fail to maintain an adequate operations infrastructure. Our increasing user traffic, growth in services, and the complexity of our products and services demand more computing power. We spend substantial amounts to build, purchase, or lease datacenters and equipment and to upgrade our technology and network infrastructure to handle more traffic on our websites and in our datacenters. Our datacenters depend on the availability of permitted and buildable land, predictable energy, networking supplies, and servers, including graphics processing units (“GPUs”) and other components. The cost or availability of these dependencies could be adversely affected by a variety of factors, including the transition to a clean energy economy, local and regional environmental regulations, and geopolitical disruptions. These demands continue to increase as we introduce new products and services and support the growth and the augmentation of existing services such as Bing, Azure, Microsoft Account services, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, Dynamics 365, OneDrive, SharePoint Online, Skype, Xbox, and Outlook.com through the incorporation of AI features and/or functionality. We are rapidly growing our business of providing a platform and back-end hosting for services provided by third parties to their end users. Maintaining, securing, and expanding this infrastructure is expensive and complex, and requires development of principles for datacenter builds in geographies with higher safety and reliability risks. It requires that we maintain an Internet connectivity infrastructure and storage and compute capacity that is robust and reliable within competitive and regulatory constraints that continue to evolve. Inefficiencies or operational failures, including temporary or permanent loss of customer data, insufficient Internet connectivity, insufficient or unavailable power supply, or inadequate storage and compute capacity, could diminish the quality of our products, services, and user experience resulting in contractual liability, claims by customers and other third parties, regulatory actions, damage to our reputation, and loss of current and potential users, subscribers, and advertisers, each of which may adversely impact our consolidated financial statements.
We may experience quality or supply problems. Our hardware products such as Xbox consoles, Surface devices, and other devices we design and market are highly complex and can have defects in design, manufacture, or associated software. We could incur significant expenses, lost revenue, and reputational harm as a result of recalls, safety alerts, or product liability claims if we fail to prevent, detect, or address such issues through design, testing, or warranty repairs.
Our software products and services also may experience quality or reliability problems. The highly sophisticated software we develop may contain bugs and other defects that interfere with their intended operation. Our customers increasingly rely on us for critical business functions and multiple workloads. Many of our products and services are interdependent with one another. Each of these circumstances potentially magnifies the impact of quality or reliability issues. Any defects we do not detect and fix in pre-release testing could cause reduced sales and revenue, damage to our reputation, repair or remediation costs, delays in the release of new products or versions, or legal liability. Although our license agreements typically contain provisions that eliminate or limit our exposure to liability, there is no assurance these provisions will withstand legal challenge.
There are limited suppliers for certain device and datacenter components. Our competitors use some of the same suppliers and their demand for hardware components can affect the capacity available to us. If components are delayed or become unavailable, whether because of supplier capacity constraint, industry shortages, legal or regulatory changes that restrict supply sources, or other reasons, we may not obtain timely replacement supplies, resulting in reduced sales or inadequate datacenter capacity to support the delivery and continued development of our products and services. Component shortages, excess or obsolete inventory, or price reductions resulting in inventory adjustments may increase our cost of revenue. Xbox consoles, Surface devices, datacenter servers, and other hardware are assembled in Asia and other geographies that may be subject to disruptions in the supply chain, resulting in shortages that would affect our revenue and operating margins.
LEGAL, REGULATORY, AND LITIGATION RISKS
Government litigation and regulatory activity relating to competition rules may limit how we design and market our products. Government agencies closely scrutinize us under U.S. and foreign competition laws. Governments are actively enforcing competition laws and regulations, and this includes scrutiny in potentially large markets such as the EU, the U.S., and China. Some jurisdictions also allow competitors or consumers to assert claims of anti-competitive conduct. U.S. federal and state antitrust authorities have previously brought enforcement actions and continue to scrutinize our business.
30PART I
Item 1AFor example, the European Commission (“the Commission”) closely scrutinizes the design of high-volume Microsoft products and the terms on which we make certain technologies used in these products, such as file formats, programming interfaces, and protocols, available to other companies. Flagship product releases such as Windows can receive significant scrutiny under EU or other competition laws.
Our portfolio of first-party devices continues to grow; at the same time our OEM partners offer a large variety of devices for our platforms. As a result, increasingly we both cooperate and compete with our OEM partners, creating a risk that we fail to do so in compliance with competition rules. Regulatory scrutiny in this area may increase. Certain foreign governments, particularly in China and other countries in Asia, have advanced arguments under their competition laws that exert downward pressure on royalties for our intellectual property.
Competition law regulatory actions and court decisions may result in fines or hinder our ability to provide the benefits of our software to consumers and businesses, reducing the attractiveness of our products and the revenue that comes from them. New competition law actions could be initiated, potentially using previous actions as precedent. The outcome of such actions, or steps taken to avoid them, could adversely affect us in a variety of ways, including causing us to withdraw products from or modify products for certain markets, decreasing the value of our assets, adversely affecting our ability to monetize our products, or inhibiting our ability to consummate acquisition or impose conditions on acquisitions that may reduce their value.
Laws and regulations relating to anti-corruption and trade could result in increased costs, fines, criminal penalties, or reputational damage. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”) and other anti-corruption laws and regulations (“Anti-Corruption Laws”) prohibit corrupt payments by our employees, vendors, or agents, and the accounting provisions of the FCPA require us to maintain accurate books and records and adequate internal controls. From time to time, we receive inquiries from authorities in the U.S. and elsewhere which may be based on reports from employees and others about our business activities outside the U.S. and our compliance with Anti-Corruption Laws. Periodically, we receive such reports directly and investigate them, and also cooperate with investigations by U.S. and foreign law enforcement authorities. An example of increasing international regulatory complexity is the EU Whistleblower Directive, initiated in 2021, which may present compliance challenges to the extent it is implemented in different forms by EU member states. Most countries in which we operate also have competition laws that prohibit competitors from colluding or otherwise attempting to reduce competition between themselves. While we devote substantial resources to our U.S. and international compliance programs and have implemented policies, training, and internal controls designed to reduce the risk of corrupt payments and collusive activity, our employees, vendors, or agents may violate our policies. Our failure to comply with Anti-Corruption Laws or competition laws could result in significant fines and penalties, criminal sanctions against us, our officers, or our employees, prohibitions on the conduct of our business, and damage to our reputation.
Increasing trade laws, policies, sanctions, and other regulatory requirements also affect our operations in and outside the U.S. relating to trade and investment. Economic sanctions in the U.S., the EU, and other countries prohibit most business with restricted entities or countries. U.S. export controls restrict Microsoft from offering many of its products and services to, or making investments in, certain entities in specified countries. U.S. import controls restrict us from integrating certain information and communication technologies into our supply chain and allow for government review of transactions involving information and communications technology from countries determined to be foreign adversaries. Supply chain regulations may impact the availability of goods or result in additional regulatory scrutiny. Periods of intense diplomatic or armed conflict, such as the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, may result in (1) new and rapidly evolving sanctions and trade restrictions, which may impair trade with sanctioned individuals and countries, and (2) negative impacts to regional trade ecosystems among our customers, partners, and us. Non-compliance with sanctions as well as general ecosystem disruptions could result in reputational harm, operational delays, monetary fines, loss of revenues, increased costs, loss of export privileges, or criminal sanctions.
31PART I
Item 1ALaws and regulations relating to the handling of personal data may impede the adoption of our services or result in increased costs, legal claims, fines against us, or reputational damage. The growth of our Internet- and cloud-based services internationally relies increasingly on the movement of data across national boundaries. Legal requirements relating to the collection, storage, handling, and transfer of personal data continue to evolve. For example, while the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (“DPF”) has been recognized as adequate under EU law to allow transfers of personal data from the EU to certified companies in the U.S., the DPF is subject to further legal challenge which could cause the legal requirements for data transfers from the EU to be uncertain. EU data protection authorities have and may again block the use of certain U.S.-based services that involve the transfer of data to the U.S. In the EU and other markets, potential new rules and restrictions on the flow of data across borders could increase the cost and complexity of delivering our products and services.
In addition, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), which applies to all of our activities conducted from an establishment in the EU or related to products and services offered in the EU, imposes a range of compliance obligations regarding the handling of personal data. More recently, the EU has been developing new requirements related to the use of data, including in the Digital Markets Act, the Digital Services Act, and the Data Act, that add additional rules and restriction on the use of data in our products and services. Engineering efforts to build and maintain capabilities to facilitate compliance with these laws involve substantial expense and the diversion of engineering resources from other projects. We might experience reduced demand for our offerings if we are unable to engineer products that meet our legal duties or help our customers meet their obligations under these and other data regulations, or if our implementation to comply makes our offerings less attractive. Compliance with these obligations depends in part on how particular regulators interpret and apply them. If we fail to comply, or if regulators assert we have failed to comply (including in response to complaints made by customers), it may lead to regulatory enforcement actions, which can result in significant monetary penalties, private lawsuits, reputational damage, blockage of international data transfers, and loss of customers. The highest fines assessed under GDPR have recently been increasing, especially against large technology companies. Jurisdictions around the world, such as China, India, and states in the U.S. have adopted, or are considering adopting or expanding, laws and regulations imposing obligations regarding the collection, handling, and transfer of personal data.
Our investment in gaining insights from data is becoming central to the value of the services, including AI services, we deliver to customers, to operational efficiency and key opportunities in monetization, and to customer perceptions of quality. Our ability to use data in this way may be constrained by regulatory developments that impede realizing the expected return from this investment. Ongoing legal analyses, reviews, and inquiries by regulators of Microsoft practices, or relevant practices of other organizations, may result in burdensome or inconsistent requirements, including data sovereignty and localization requirements, affecting the location, movement, collection, and use of our customer and internal employee data as well as the management of that data. Compliance with applicable laws and regulations regarding personal data may require changes in services, business practices, or internal systems that result in increased costs, lower revenue, reduced efficiency, or greater difficulty in competing with foreign-based firms. Compliance with data regulations might limit our ability to innovate or offer certain features and functionality in some jurisdictions where we operate. Failure to comply with existing or new rules may result in significant penalties or orders to stop the alleged noncompliant activity, as well as negative publicity and diversion of management time and effort.
Existing and increasing legal and regulatory requirements could adversely affect our results of operations. We are subject to a wide range of laws, regulations, and legal requirements in the U.S. and globally, including those that may apply to our products and online services offerings, and those that impose requirements related to user privacy, telecommunications, data storage and protection, advertising, and online content. Laws in several jurisdictions, including EU Member State laws under the European Electronic Communications Code, increasingly define certain of our services as regulated telecommunications services. This trend may continue and will result in these offerings being subjected to additional data protection, security, law enforcement surveillance, and other obligations. Regulators and private litigants may assert that our collection, use, and management of customer data and other information is inconsistent with their laws and regulations, including laws that apply to the tracking of users via technology such as cookies. New environmental, social, and governance laws and regulations are expanding mandatory disclosure, reporting, and diligence requirements. Legislative or regulatory action relating to cybersecurity requirements may increase the costs to develop, implement, or secure our products and services. Compliance with evolving digital accessibility laws and standards will require engineering and is important to our efforts to empower all people and organizations to achieve more. Legislative and regulatory action is emerging in the areas of AI and content moderation, which could increase costs or restrict opportunity. For example, in the EU, an AI Act is being considered, and may entail increased costs or decreased opportunities for the operation of our AI services in the European market.
32PART I
Item 1AHow these laws and regulations apply to our business is often unclear, subject to change over time, and sometimes may be inconsistent from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In addition, governments’ approach to enforcement, and our products and services, are continuing to evolve. Compliance with existing, expanding, or new laws and regulations may involve significant costs or require changes in products or business practices that could adversely affect our results of operations. Noncompliance could result in the imposition of penalties or orders we cease the alleged noncompliant activity. In addition, there is increasing pressure from advocacy groups, regulators, competitors, customers, and other stakeholders across many of these areas. If our products do not meet customer expectations or legal requirements, we could lose sales opportunities or face regulatory or legal actions.
We have claims and lawsuits against us that may result in adverse outcomes. We are subject to a variety of claims and lawsuits. These claims may arise from a wide variety of business practices and initiatives, including major new product releases such as Windows, AI services, significant business transactions, warranty or product claims, employment practices, and regulation. Adverse outcomes in some or all of these claims may result in significant monetary damages or injunctive relief that could adversely affect our ability to conduct our business. The litigation and other claims are subject to inherent uncertainties and management’s view of these matters may change in the future. A material adverse impact in our consolidated financial statements could occur for the period in which the effect of an unfavorable outcome becomes probable and reasonably estimable.
Our business with government customers may present additional uncertainties. We derive substantial revenue from government contracts. Government contracts generally can present risks and challenges not present in private commercial agreements. For instance, we may be subject to government audits and investigations relating to these contracts, we could be suspended or debarred as a governmental contractor, we could incur civil and criminal fines and penalties, and under certain circumstances contracts may be rescinded. Some agreements may allow a government to terminate without cause and provide for higher liability limits for certain losses. Some contracts may be subject to periodic funding approval, reductions, cancellations, or delays which could adversely impact public-sector demand for our products and services. These events could negatively impact our results of operations, financial condition, and reputation.
We may have additional tax liabilities. We are subject to income taxes in the U.S. and many foreign jurisdictions. Significant judgment is required in determining our worldwide provision for income taxes. In the course of our business, there are many transactions and calculations where the ultimate tax determination is uncertain. For example, compliance with the 2017 United States Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (“TCJA”) and possible future legislative changes may require the collection of information not regularly produced within the company, the use of estimates in our consolidated financial statements, and the exercise of significant judgment in accounting for its provisions. As regulations and guidance evolve with respect to the TCJA or possible future legislative changes, and as we gather more information and perform more analysis, our results may differ from previous estimates and may materially affect our consolidated financial statements.
We are regularly under audit by tax authorities in different jurisdictions. Although we believe that our provision for income taxes and our tax estimates are reasonable, tax authorities may disagree with certain positions we have taken. In addition, economic and political pressures to increase tax revenue in various jurisdictions may make resolving tax disputes favorably more difficult. We are currently under Internal Revenue Service audit for prior tax years, with the primary unresolved issues relating to transfer pricing. The final resolution of those audits, and other audits or litigation, may differ from the amounts recorded in our consolidated financial statements and may materially affect our consolidated financial statements in the period or periods in which that determination is made.
We earn a significant amount of our operating income outside the U.S. A change in the mix of earnings and losses in countries with differing statutory tax rates, changes in our business or structure, or the expiration of or disputes about certain tax agreements in a particular country may result in higher effective tax rates for the company. In addition, changes in U.S. federal and state or international tax laws applicable to corporate multinationals, other fundamental law changes currently being considered by many countries, including in the U.S., and changes in taxing jurisdictions’ administrative interpretations, decisions, policies, and positions may materially adversely impact our consolidated financial statements.
33PART I
Item 1AINTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RISKSWe face risks related to the protection and utilization of our intellectual property that may result in our business and operating results may be harmed. Protecting our intellectual property rights and combating unlicensed copying and use of our software and other intellectual property on a global basis is difficult. Similarly, the absence of harmonized patent laws makes it more difficult to ensure consistent respect for patent rights.
Changes in the law may continue to weaken our ability to prevent the use of patented technology or collect revenue for licensing our patents. Additionally, licensees of our patents may fail to satisfy their obligations to pay us royalties or may contest the scope and extent of their obligations. Finally, our increasing engagement with open source software will also cause us to license our intellectual property rights broadly in certain situations. If we are unable to protect our intellectual property, our revenue may be adversely affected.
Source code, the detailed program commands for our operating systems and other software programs, is critical to our business. If our source code leaks, we might lose future trade secret protection for that code. It may then become easier for third parties to compete with our products by copying functionality, which could adversely affect our revenue and operating results. Unauthorized disclosure of source code also could increase the security risks described elsewhere in these risk factors.
Third parties may claim that we infringe their intellectual property. From time to time, others claim we infringe their intellectual property rights. To resolve these claims, we may enter into royalty and licensing agreements on terms that are less favorable than currently available, stop selling or redesign affected products or services, or pay damages to satisfy indemnification commitments with our customers. Adverse outcomes could also include monetary damages or injunctive relief that may limit or prevent importing, marketing, and selling our products or services that have infringing technologies. We have paid significant amounts to settle claims related to the use of technology and intellectual property rights and to procure intellectual property rights as part of our strategy to manage this risk, and may continue to do so.GENERAL RISKSIf our reputation or our brands are damaged, our business and operating results may be harmed . Our reputation and brands are globally recognized and are important to our business. Our reputation and brands affect our ability to attract and retain consumer, business, and public-sector customers. There are numerous ways our reputation or brands could be damaged. These include product safety or quality issues, our environmental impact and sustainability, supply chain practices, or human rights record. We may experience backlash from customers, government entities, advocacy groups, employees, and other stakeholders that disagree with our product offering decisions or public policy positions. Damage to our reputation or our brands may occur from, among other things:• The introduction of new features, products, services, or terms of service that customers, users, or partners do not like.• Public scrutiny of our decisions regarding user privacy, data practices, or content.
• Data security breaches, compliance failures, or actions of partners or individual employees.
The proliferation of social media may increase the likelihood, speed, and magnitude of negative brand events. If our brands or reputation are damaged, it could negatively impact our revenues or margins, or ability to attract the most highly qualified employees.
Adverse economic or market conditions may harm our business. Worsening economic conditions, including inflation, recession, pandemic, or other changes in economic conditions, may cause lower IT spending and adversely affect our revenue. If demand for PCs, servers, and other computing devices declines, or consumer or business spending for those products declines, our revenue will be adversely affected.Our product distribution system relies on an extensive partner and retail network. OEMs building devices that run our software have also been a significant means of distribution. The impact of economic conditions on our partners, such as the bankruptcy of a major distributor, OEM, or retailer, could cause sales channel disruption.
Challenging economic conditions also may impair the ability of our customers to pay for products and services they have purchased. As a result, allowances for doubtful accounts and write-offs of accounts receivable may increase.34PART I
Item 1AWe maintain an investment portfolio of various holdings, types, and maturities. These investments are subject to general credit, liquidity, market, and interest rate risks, which may be exacerbated by market downturns or events that affect global financial markets. A significant part of our investment portfolio comprises U.S. government securities. If global financial markets decline for long periods, or if there is a downgrade of the U.S. government credit rating due to an actual or threatened default on government debt, our investment portfolio may be adversely affected and we could determine that more of our investments have experienced a decline in fair value, requiring impairment charges that could adversely affect our consolidated financial statements.
Catastrophic events or geopolitical conditions may disrupt our business. A disruption or failure of our systems or operations because of a major earthquake, weather event, cyberattack, terrorist attack, pandemic, or other catastrophic event could cause delays in completing sales, providing services, or performing other critical functions. Our corporate headquarters, a significant portion of our research and development activities, and certain other essential business operations are in the Seattle, Washington area, and we have other business operations in the Silicon Valley area of California, both of which are seismically active regions. A catastrophic event that results in the destruction or disruption of any of our critical business or IT systems, or the infrastructure or systems they rely on, such as power grids, could harm our ability to conduct normal business operations. Providing our customers with more services and solutions in the cloud puts a premium on the resilience of our systems and strength of our business continuity management plans and magnifies the potential impact of prolonged service outages in our consolidated financial statements.
Abrupt political change, terrorist activity, and armed conflict, such as the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, pose a risk of general economic disruption in affected countries, which may increase our operating costs and negatively impact our ability to sell to and collect from customers in affected markets. These conditions also may add uncertainty to the timing and budget for technology investment decisions by our customers and may cause supply chain disruptions for hardware manufacturers. Geopolitical change may result in changing regulatory systems and requirements and market interventions that could impact our operating strategies, access to national, regional, and global markets, hiring, and profitability. Geopolitical instability may lead to sanctions and impact our ability to do business in some markets or with some public-sector customers. Any of these changes may negatively impact our revenues.
The occurrence of regional epidemics or a global pandemic, such as COVID-19, may adversely affect our operations, financial condition, and results of operations. The extent to which global pandemics impact our business going forward will depend on factors such as the duration and scope of the pandemic; governmental, business, and individuals' actions in response to the pandemic; and the impact on economic activity, including the possibility of recession or financial market instability. Measures to contain a global pandemic may intensify other risks described in these Risk Factors.
We may incur increased costs to effectively manage these aspects of our business. If we are unsuccessful, it may adversely impact our revenues, cash flows, market share growth, and reputation.The long-term effects of climate change on the global economy and the IT industry in particular are unclear. Environmental regulations or changes in the supply, demand, or available sources of energy or other resources may affect the availability or cost of goods and services, including natural resources, necessary to run our business. Changes in climate where we operate may increase the costs of powering and cooling computer hardware we use to develop software and provide cloud-based services.35PART IItem 1A
Our global business exposes us to operational and economic risks. Our customers are located throughout the world and a significant part of our revenue comes from international sales. The global nature of our business creates operational, economic, and geopolitical risks. Our results of operations may be affected by global, regional, and local economic developments, monetary policy, inflation, and recession, as well as political and military disputes. In addition, our international growth strategy includes certain markets, the developing nature of which presents several risks, including deterioration of social, political, labor, or economic conditions in a country or region, and difficulties in staffing and managing foreign operations. Emerging nationalist and protectionist trends and concerns about human rights, the environment, and political expression in specific countries may significantly alter the trade and commercial environments. Changes to trade policy or agreements as a result of populism, protectionism, or economic nationalism may result in higher tariffs, local sourcing initiatives, and non-local sourcing restrictions, export controls, investment restrictions, or other developments that make it more difficult to sell our products in foreign countries. Disruptions of these kinds in developed or emerging markets could negatively impact demand for our products and services, impair our ability to operate in certain regions, or increase operating costs. Although we hedge a portion of our international currency exposure, significant fluctuations in foreign exchange rates between the U.S. dollar and foreign currencies may adversely affect our results of operations.
Our business depends on our ability to attract and retain talented employees. Our business is based on successfully attracting and retaining talented employees representing diverse backgrounds, experiences, and skill sets. The market for highly skilled workers and leaders in our industry is extremely competitive. Maintaining our brand and reputation, as well as a diverse and inclusive work environment that enables all our employees to thrive, are important to our ability to recruit and retain employees. We are also limited in our ability to recruit internationally by restrictive domestic immigration laws. Changes to U.S. immigration policies that restrain the flow of technical and professional talent may inhibit our ability to adequately staff our research and development efforts. If we are less successful in our recruiting efforts, or if we cannot retain highly skilled workers and key leaders, our ability to develop and deliver successful products and services may be adversely affected. Effective succession planning is also important to our long-term success. Failure to ensure effective transfer of knowledge and smooth transitions involving key employees could hinder our strategic planning and execution. How employment-related laws are interpreted and applied to our workforce practices may result in increased operating costs and less flexibility in how we meet our workforce needs. Our global workforce is predominantly non-unionized, although we do have some employees in the U.S. and internationally who are represented by unions or works councils. In the U.S., there has been a general increase in workers exercising their right to form or join a union. The unionization of significant employee populations could result in higher costs and other operational changes necessary to respond to changing conditions and to establish new relationships with worker representatives.
36
PART I
FY 2024-06-30 (later)
Item 1A
ITEM 1A. RIS K FACTORSOur operations and financial results are subject to various risks and uncertainties, including those described below, that could adversely affect our business, operations, financial condition, results of operations, liquidity, and the trading price of our common stock.STRATEGIC AND COMPETITIVE RISKSWe face intense competition across all markets for our products and services, which may adversely affect our results of operations.Competition in the technology sectorOur competitors range in size from diversified global companies with significant research and development resources to small, specialized firms whose narrower product lines may let them be more effective in deploying technical, marketing, and financial resources. Barriers to entry in many of our businesses are low and many of the areas in which we compete evolve rapidly with changing and disruptive technologies, shifting user needs, and frequent introductions of new products and services. If we do not continue to innovate and provide products, devices, and services that appeal to businesses and consumers, we may not remain competitive, which may adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.Competition among platform-based ecosystems
An important element of our business model has been to create platform-based ecosystems on which many participants can build diverse solutions. A well-established ecosystem creates beneficial network effects among users, application developers, and the platform provider that can accelerate growth. Establishing significant scale in the marketplace is necessary to achieve and maintain attractive margins. We face significant competition from firms that provide competing platforms.• A competing vertically-integrated model, in which a single firm controls the software and hardware elements of a product and related services, has succeeded with some consumer products such as PCs, tablets, smartphones, gaming consoles, wearables, and other endpoint devices. Competitors pursuing this model also earn revenue from services integrated with the hardware and software platform, including applications and content sold through their integrated marketplaces. They may also be able to claim security and performance benefits from their vertically integrated offer. We also offer some vertically-integrated hardware and software products and services. Shifting a portion of our business to a vertically integrated model may increase our cost of revenue and reduce our operating margins.
• We derive substantial revenue from licenses of Windows operating systems on PCs. We face significant competition from competing platforms developed for new devices and form factors such as smartphones and tablets. These devices compete on multiple bases including price and the perceived utility of the device and its platform. Users continue to turn to these devices to perform functions that in the past were performed by PCs. Even if many users view these devices as complementary to a PC, the prevalence of these devices may make it more difficult to attract application developers to our PC operating system platforms. Competing with operating systems licensed at low or no cost may decrease our PC operating system margins. Popular products or services offered on competing platforms could increase their competitive strength. In addition, some of our devices compete with products made by our original equipment manufacturer (“OEM”) partners, which may affect their commitment to our platform.• Competing platforms have content and application marketplaces with scale and significant installed bases. The variety and utility of content and applications available on a platform are important to device purchasing decisions. Users may incur costs to move data and buy new content and applications when switching platforms. To compete, we must successfully enlist developers to write applications for our platform and ensure that these applications have high quality, security, customer appeal, and value. Efforts to compete with competitors’ content and application marketplaces may increase our cost of revenue and lower our operating margins. Competitors’ rules governing their content and applications marketplaces may restrict our ability to distribute products and services through them in accordance with our technical and business model objectives.20PART I
Item 1AFor all of these reasons, we may not be able to compete successfully against our current and future competitors, which may adversely affect our business, operations, financial condition, and results of operations.Business model competition
Companies compete with us based on a growing variety of business models.• A material part of our business involves cloud-based services available across the spectrum of computing devices. Our competitors continue to develop and deploy cloud-based services for consumers and business customers, and pricing and delivery models are evolving. We and our competitors are devoting significant resources to develop and deploy our cloud-based strategies.
• We are investing in artificial intelligence (“AI”) across the entire company and infusing generative AI capabilities into our consumer and commercial offerings. We expect AI technology and services to be a highly competitive and rapidly evolving market, and new competitors continue to enter the market. We will bear significant development and operational costs to build and support the AI models, services, platforms, and infrastructure necessary to meet the needs of our customers. To compete effectively we must also be responsive to technological change, new and potential regulatory developments, and public scrutiny.• Even as we transition more of our business to infrastructure-, platform-, and software-as-a-service business model, the license-based proprietary software model generates a substantial portion of our software revenue. We bear the costs of converting original ideas into software products through investments in research and development, offsetting these costs with the revenue received from licensing our products. Many of our competitors also develop and sell software to businesses and consumers under this model.• Other competitors develop and offer free applications, online services, and content, and make money by selling third-party advertising. Advertising revenue funds development of products and services these competitors provide to users at little or no cost, competing directly with our revenue-generating products.• Some companies compete with us by modifying and then distributing open source software at little or no cost to end users, using open source AI models, and earning revenue on advertising or integrated products and services. These firms do not bear the full costs of research and development for the open source products. Some open source products mimic the features and functionality of our products.The competitive pressures described above may cause decreased sales volumes, price reductions, and/or increased operating costs, such as for research and development, marketing, and sales incentives, which may adversely affect our financial condition and results of operations.
Our focus on cloud-based and AI services presents execution and competitive risks. We are incurring significant costs to build and maintain infrastructure to support cloud computing and AI services. These costs will reduce the operating margins. Whether we succeed in cloud-based and AI services depends on our execution in several areas, including:
• Continuing to bring to market compelling cloud-based and AI experiences and products that generate increasing traffic and market share.
• Maintaining the utility, compatibility, and performance of our cloud-based and AI services on the growing array of computing devices, including PCs, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other devices.• Continuing to enhance the attractiveness of our cloud platforms to third-party developers.• Ensuring our cloud-based services meet the reliability expectations and specific requirements of our customers and maintain the security of their data as well as help them meet their own compliance needs.• Making our suite of cloud-based services platform-agnostic, available on a wide range of devices and ecosystems, including those of our competitors.It is uncertain whether our strategies will continue to attract users or generate the revenue required to succeed. If we are not effective in executing organizational and technical changes to increase efficiency and accelerate innovation, or if we fail to generate sufficient usage of our new products and services, we may not grow revenue in line with the infrastructure and development investments described above. This may adversely affect our operations, financial condition, and results of operations.
21PART I
Item 1AOur AI systems offer users powerful tools and capabilities. However, there may be instances where these systems are used in ways that are unintended or inappropriate. In addition, some users may also engage in fraudulent or abusive activities through our cloud-based services, such as unauthorized account access, payment fraud, or terms of service violations including cryptocurrency mining or launching cyberattacks. While are committed to detecting and controlling such misuse of our cloud-based and AI services, our efforts may not be effective, and we may incur reputational damage or experience adverse impacts to our business and results of operations.RISKS RELATING TO THE EVOLUTION OF OUR BUSINESSWe make significant investments in products and services that may not achieve expected returns. We will continue to make significant investments in research, development, and marketing for existing products, services, and technologies. In addition, we are focused on developing new AI platform services and incorporating AI into existing products and services. We also invest in the development and acquisition of a variety of hardware for productivity, communication, and entertainment, including PCs, tablets, and gaming devices. Investments in new technology are speculative. Commercial success depends on many factors, including innovation, developer support, and effective distribution and marketing. If customers do not perceive our latest offerings as providing significant new functionality or other value, they may reduce their purchases of new software and hardware products or upgrades, unfavorably affecting revenue. We may not achieve significant revenue from new product, service, and distribution channel investments for several years, if at all. New products and services may not be profitable or may not achieve operating margins as high as we have experienced historically. We may not get engagement in certain features that drive post-sale monetization opportunities. Our data-handling practices across our products and services will continue to be under scrutiny. Perceptions of mismanagement, driven by regulatory activity or negative public reaction to our practices or product experiences, could negatively impact product and feature adoption. Developing new technologies is complex. It can require long development and testing periods. We could experience significant delays in new releases or significant problems in creating new products or services. These factors could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Acquisitions, joint ventures, and strategic alliances may have an adverse effect on our business. We expect to continue making acquisitions and entering into joint ventures and strategic alliances as part of our long-term business strategy. For example, in March 2022 we completed our acquisition of Nuance Communications, Inc., and in October 2023 we completed our acquisition of Activision Blizzard , Inc. (“Activision Blizzard”). In January 2023 we announced the third phase of our OpenAI strategic partnership. Acquisitions and other transactions and arrangements involve significant challenges and risks, including that they do not advance our business strategy, that we get an unsatisfactory return on our investment, that they raise new compliance-related obligations and challenges, that we have difficulty integrating and retaining new employees, business systems, and technology, that they distract management from our other businesses, or that announced transactions may not be completed. If an arrangement fails to adequately anticipate changing circumstances and interests of a party, it may result in early termination or renegotiation of the arrangement. We also have limited ability to control or influence third parties with whom we have arrangements, which may impact our ability to realize the anticipated benefits. The success of these transactions and arrangements depend in part on our ability to leverage them to enhance our existing products and services or develop compelling new ones, as well as the acquired companies’ ability to meet our policies and processes in areas such as data governance, privacy, and cybersecurity. It may take longer than expected to realize the full benefits from these transactions and arrangements, such as increased revenue or enhanced efficiencies, or the benefits may ultimately be smaller than we expected. In addition, an acquisition may be subject to challenge even after it has been completed. For example, the Federal Trade Commission continues to challenge our Activision Blizzard acquisition and could, if successful, alter or unwind the transaction. These events could adversely affect our business, operations, financial condition, and results of operations.
If our goodwill or amortizable intangible assets become impaired, we may be required to record a significant charge to earnings. We acquire other companies and intangible assets and may not realize all the economic benefit from those acquisitions, which could cause an impairment of goodwill or intangibles. We review our amortizable intangible assets for impairment when events or changes in circumstances indicate the carrying value may not be recoverable. We test goodwill for impairment at least annually. Factors that may be a change in circumstances, indicating that the carrying value of our goodwill or amortizable intangible assets may not be recoverable, include a decline in our stock price and market capitalization, reduced future cash flow estimates, and slower growth rates in industry segments in which we participate. We have in the past recorded, and may in the future be required to record, a significant charge in our consolidated financial statements during the period in which any impairment of our goodwill or amortizable intangible assets is determined, negatively affecting our results of operations.
22PART I
Item 1ACYBERSECURITY, DATA PRIVACY, AND PLATFORM ABUSE RISKS
Cyberattacks and security vulnerabilities could lead to reduced revenue, increased costs, liability claims, or harm to our reputation or competitive position.
Security of our information technologyThreats to IT security can take a variety of forms. Individual and groups of hackers and sophisticated organizations, including state-sponsored organizations or nation-states, continuously undertake attacks that pose threats to our customers and our IT, and we have experienced cybersecurity incidents in which such actors have gained unauthorized access to our IT systems and data, including customer systems and data. These actors use a wide variety of methods, which include developing and deploying malicious software; exploiting known and potential vulnerabilities or intentionally designed processes in hardware, software, or other infrastructure to attack our products and services or gain access to our networks and datacenters; using social engineering techniques to induce our employees, users, partners, or customers to disclose sensitive information, such as passwords, or take other actions to gain access to our data or our users’ or customers’ data; or acting in a coordinated manner or conducting coordinated attacks. For example, as previously disclosed in our Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on January 19, 2024 and amended on March 8, 2024, beginning in late November 2023, a nation-state associated threat actor used a password spray attack to compromise a legacy test account and, in turn, gain access to Microsoft email accounts. The threat actor used and may continue to use information it obtained to gain, or attempt to gain, unauthorized access to some of our source code repositories and internal systems, and the threat actor may utilize this information to otherwise adversely affect our business and results of operations. This incident has and may continue to result in harm to our reputation and customer relationships. Additionally, we may discover additional impacts of this or other incidents as part of our ongoing examination of this incident. Nation-state and state-sponsored actors can sustain malicious activities for extended periods and deploy significant resources to plan and carry out attacks. Nation-state attacks against us, our customers, or our partners have and may continue to intensify during periods of intense diplomatic or armed conflict, such as the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Cyber incidents and attacks, individually or in the aggregate, could adversely affect our financial condition, results of operations, competitive position, and reputation, or expose us to legal or regulatory risk.
Inadequate account security or organizational security practices, including those of companies we have acquired or those of the third parties we utilize, have resulted and may result in unauthorized access to our IT systems and data, including customer systems and data, in the future. For example, system administrators may fail to timely remove employee account access when no longer appropriate. Employees or third parties may intentionally compromise our or our users’ security or systems or reveal confidential information. Malicious actors may employ the IT supply chain to introduce malware through software updates or compromised supplier accounts or hardware.
Cyberthreats are constantly evolving and becoming increasingly sophisticated and complex, increasing the difficulty of detecting and successfully defending against them. Threat actors may also utilize emerging technologies, such as AI and machine learning. We may have no current capability to detect certain vulnerabilities or new attack methods, which may allow them to persist in the environment over long periods of time. It may be difficult to determine the best way to investigate, mitigate, contain, and remediate the harm caused by a cyber incident. Such efforts may not be successful, and we may make errors or fail to take necessary actions. It is possible that threat actors may gain undetected access to other networks and systems after establishing a foothold on an internal system. Cyber incidents and attacks can have cascading impacts that unfold with increasing speed across our internal networks and systems, as well as those of our partners and customers. In addition, it may take considerable time for us to investigate and evaluate the full impact of incidents, particularly for sophisticated attacks. These factors may inhibit our ability to provide prompt, full, and reliable information about the incident to our customers, partners, regulators, and the public. Breaches of our facilities, network, or data security can disrupt the security of our systems and business applications, impair our ability to provide services to our customers and protect the privacy of their data, result in product development delays, compromise confidential or technical business information, result in theft or misuse of our intellectual property or other assets, subject us to ransomware attacks, require us to allocate more resources to improve technologies or remediate the impacts of attacks, or otherwise adversely affect our business. In addition, actions taken to remediate an incident could result in outages, data losses, and disruptions of our services.
23PART I
Item 1AOur internal IT environment continues to evolve. Often, we are early adopters of new devices and technologies. We embrace new ways of sharing data and communicating internally and with partners and customers using methods such as social networking and other consumer-oriented technologies. Increasing use of generative AI models in our internal systems may create new attack methods for adversaries. Our business policies and internal security controls may not keep pace with these changes as new threats emerge or the emerging cybersecurity regulations in jurisdictions worldwide.Security of our products, services, devices, and customers’ dataThe security of our products and services is important in our customers’ decisions to purchase or use our products or services across cloud and on-premises environments. Security threats are a significant challenge to companies like us, whose business is providing technology products and services to others. Threats to or attacks on our own IT infrastructure, such as the nation-state attack described in the prior risk factor, have also affected our customers and may do so in the future. Customers using our cloud-based services rely on the security of our infrastructure, including hardware and other elements provided by third parties, to ensure the reliability of our services and the protection of their data. Adversaries tend to focus their efforts on the most popular operating systems, programs, and services, including many of ours, and we expect that to continue. In addition, adversaries can attack our customers’ on-premises or cloud environments, sometimes exploiting previously unknown (“zero-day”) vulnerabilities, such as the attack in early calendar year 2021 with several of our Exchange Server on-premises products. Vulnerabilities in these or any product can persist even after we have issued security patches if customers have not installed the most recent updates, or if the attackers exploited the vulnerabilities before patching to install additional malware to further compromise customers’ systems. Adversaries will continue to attack customers using our cloud services as customers embrace digital transformation. Adversaries that acquire user account information can use that information to compromise our users’ accounts, including where accounts share the same attributes such as passwords. Inadequate account security practices may also result in unauthorized access, and user activity may result in ransomware or other malicious software impacting a customer’s use of our products or services. There may be vulnerabilities in open source software that may make our products susceptible to cyberattacks as we increasingly incorporate open source software into our products. Additionally, features that rely on generative AI may be susceptible to unanticipated security threats from adversaries as we add new generative AI features to our services while continuously developing our understanding of security risks and protection methods in the new field of generative AI.
Our customers operate complex IT systems with third-party hardware and software from multiple vendors that may include systems acquired over many years. They expect our products and services to support all these systems and products, including those that no longer incorporate the strongest current security advances or standards. As a result, we may not be able to discontinue support in our services for a product, service, standard, or feature solely because a more secure alternative is available. Failure to utilize the most current security advances and standards can increase our customers’ vulnerability to attack. Further, customers of widely varied sizes and technical sophistication use our technology, and consequently may still have limited capabilities and resources to help them adopt and implement state-of-the-art cybersecurity practices and technologies. In addition, we must account for this wide variation of technical sophistication when defining default settings for our products and services, including security default settings, as these settings may limit or otherwise impact other aspects of IT operations and some customers may have limited capability to review and reset these defaults.Cyberattacks may adversely impact our customers even if our production services are not directly compromised. We are committed to notifying our customers whose systems have been impacted as we become aware and have actionable information for customers to help protect themselves. We are also committed to providing guidance and support on detection, tracking, and remediation. We may not be able to detect the existence or extent of these attacks for all of our customers or have information on how to detect or track an attack, especially where an attack involves on-premises software such as Exchange Server where we may have no or limited visibility into our customers’ computing environments.Any of the foregoing events could result in reputational harm, loss of revenue, increased costs, or otherwise adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
24
PART I
Item 1ADevelopment and deployment of defensive measuresTo defend against security threats to our internal IT systems, our cloud-based services, and our customers’ systems, we must continuously engineer more secure products and services, enhance security, threat detection, and reliability features, escalate and improve the deployment of software updates to address security vulnerabilities in our own products as well as those provided by others in a timely manner, develop mitigation technologies that help to secure customers from attacks even when software updates are not deployed, maintain the digital security infrastructure that protects the integrity of our network, products, and services, and provide security tools such as firewalls, anti-virus software, and advanced security and information about the need to deploy security measures and the impact of doing so.
The cost of measures to protect products and customer-facing services could reduce our operating margins. If we fail to do these things well, actual or perceived security vulnerabilities in our products and services, data corruption issues, or reduced performance could harm our reputation and lead customers to reduce or delay future purchases of products or subscriptions to services, or to use competing products or services. Customers may also spend more on protecting their existing computer systems from attack, which could delay adoption of additional products or services. Customers in certain industries such as financial services, health care, and government may have enhanced or specialized expectations and requirements to which we must engineer our products and services. Customers and third parties granted access to their systems may fail to update their systems, continue to run software or operating systems we no longer support, or may fail timely to install or enable security patches, or may otherwise fail to adopt adequate security practices Any of these could adversely affect our reputation and results of operations. Actual or perceived vulnerabilities may lead to claims against us. Our license agreements typically contain provisions that eliminate or limit our exposure to liability, but there is no assurance these provisions will withstand legal challenges. At times, to achieve commercial objectives, we may enter into agreements with larger liability exposure to customers.
Our products operate in conjunction with and are dependent on products and components across a broad ecosystem of third parties. If there is a security vulnerability in one of these components, and if there is a security exploit targeting it, we may experience adverse impacts to our results of operations, reputation, or competitive position.
Disclosure and misuse of personal data could result in liability and harm our reputation. As we continue to grow the number, breadth, and scale of our cloud-based offerings, we store and process increasingly large amounts of personal data of our customers and users. The continued occurrence of high-profile data breaches provides evidence of an external environment increasingly hostile to information security. Despite our efforts to improve the security controls across our business groups and geographies, it is possible our security controls over personal data, our training of employees and third parties on data security, and other practices we follow may not prevent the improper disclosure or misuse of customer or user data we or our vendors store and manage. Relatedly, despite our efforts to continuously improve security controls, it is possible that we may fail to identify or mitigate insider threat activities that could lead to the misuse of our systems or customer and user data. In addition, third parties who have limited access to our customer or user data may use this data in unauthorized ways. Improper disclosure or misuse could harm our reputation, lead to legal exposure to customers or users, or subject us to liability under laws that protect personal data, resulting in increased costs or loss of revenue. Our software products and services also enable our customers and users to store and process personal data on-premises or in a cloud-based environment we host. Government authorities can sometimes require us to produce customer or user data in response to valid legal orders. In the U.S. and elsewhere, we advocate for transparency concerning these requests and appropriate limitations on government authority to compel disclosure. Despite our efforts to protect customer and user data, perceptions that the collection, use, and retention of personal information is not satisfactorily protected could inhibit sales of our products or services and could limit adoption of our cloud-based solutions by consumers, businesses, and government entities. Additional security measures we may take to address customer or user concerns, or constraints on our flexibility to determine where and how to operate datacenters in response to customer or user expectations or governmental rules or actions, may increase costs or hinder sales of our products and services.
We may not be able to protect information in our products and services from use by others . LinkedIn and other Microsoft products and services contain valuable information and content protected by contractual restrictions or technical measures. In certain cases, we have made commitments to our members and users to limit access to or use of this information. Changes in the law or interpretations of the law may weaken our ability to prevent third parties from scraping or gathering information or content through use of bots or other measures and using it for their own benefit which could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
25PART I
Item 1AAbuse of our platforms may harm our reputation or user engagement.
Advertising, professional, marketplace, and gaming platform abusesFor platform products and services that provide content or host ads that come from or can be influenced by third parties, our reputation or user engagement may be negatively affected by activity that is hostile or inappropriate. This activity may come from users impersonating other people or organizations, including through the use of AI technologies, dissemination of information that may be viewed as misleading or intended to manipulate the opinions of our users, or the use of our products or services that violates our terms of service or otherwise for objectionable or illegal ends. Preventing or responding to these actions may require us to make substantial investments in people and technology and these investments may not be successful, adversely affecting our business, financial condition, and results of operations.Other digital safety abusesOur hosted consumer services as well as our enterprise services may be used to generate or disseminate harmful or illegal content in violation of our terms or applicable law. We may not proactively discover such content due to scale, the limitations of existing technologies, and conflicting legal frameworks. When discovered by users and others, such content may negatively affect our reputation, our brands, and user engagement. Regulations and other initiatives to make platforms responsible for preventing or eliminating harmful content online have been enacted, and we expect this to continue. We may be subject to enhanced regulatory oversight, civil or criminal liability, or reputational damage if we fail to comply with content moderation regulations, adversely affecting our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Our products and services, how they are used by customers, and how third-party products and services interact with them, may present security, privacy, and execution risks. Our products and services may contain defects in design, manufacture, or operation that make them insecure or ineffective for their intended purposes. For example, an Internet of Things solution may have multiple layers of hardware, sensors, processors, software, and firmware, several of which we may not develop or control, and may have limited ability to be updated or patched. Further, customers control our products and services, including our AI products, within their environments, and may deploy them in high-risk scenarios or utilize them inappropriately. As a result, our products and services may increasingly affect personal health and safety. Our products may also collect large amounts of data in manners which may not satisfy customers or regulatory requirements. Our customers also operate complex IT systems with third-party hardware and software from multiple vendors whose products or personnel may take or fail to take actions which impact the reliability or security of our products and services. If our products and services do not work as intended, are utilized in methods not intended, violate the law, or harm individuals or businesses, we may be subject to legal claims or enforcement actions. These risks, if realized, may increase our costs, damage our reputation, or adversely affect our results of operations.
Issues in the development and use of AI may result in reputational or competitive harm or liability . We are building AI into many of our offerings, including our productivity services, and we are also making AI available for our customers to use in solutions that they build. This AI may be developed by Microsoft or others, including our strategic partner, OpenAI. We expect these elements of our business to grow. We envision a future in which AI operating in devices, applications, and the cloud helps our customers be more productive in their work and personal lives. As with many innovations, AI presents risks and challenges that could affect its adoption, and therefore our business. AI algorithms or training methodologies may be flawed. Datasets may be overbroad, insufficient, or contain biased information. Content generated by AI systems may be offensive, illegal, inaccurate, or otherwise harmful. Ineffective or inadequate AI development or deployment practices by Microsoft or others could result in incidents that impair the acceptance of AI solutions, cause harm to individuals, customers, or society, or result in our products and services not working as intended. Human review of certain outputs may be required. Our implementation of AI systems could result in legal liability, regulatory action, brand, reputational, or competitive harm, or other adverse impacts. These risks may arise from current copyright infringement and other claims related to AI training and output, new and proposed legislation and regulations, such as the European Union’s (“EU”) AI Act and the U.S.’s AI Executive Order, and new applications of data protection, privacy, consumer protection, intellectual property, and other laws. Some AI scenarios present ethical issues or may have broad impacts on society. If we enable or offer AI solutions that have unintended consequences, unintended usage or customization by our customers and partners, are contrary to our responsible AI policies and practices, or are otherwise controversial because of their impact on human rights, privacy, employment, or other social, economic, or political issues, our reputation, competitive position, business, financial condition, and results of operations may be adversely affected.
26PART I
Item 1A
OPERATIONAL RISKSWe may have excessive outages, data losses, and disruptions of our online services if we fail to maintain an adequate operations infrastructure. Our increasing user traffic, growth in services, and the complexity of our products and services demand more computing power. We spend substantial amounts to build, purchase, or lease datacenters and equipment and to upgrade our technology and network infrastructure to handle more traffic on our websites and in our datacenters. Our datacenters depend on the availability of permitted and buildable land, predictable energy, networking supplies, and servers, including graphics processing units and other components. The cost or availability of these dependencies could be adversely affected by a variety of factors, including the transition to a clean energy economy, local and regional environmental regulations, and geopolitical disruptions. These demands continue to increase as we introduce new products and services and support the growth and the augmentation of existing services, including through the incorporation of AI features and/or functionality. We are rapidly growing our business of providing a platform and back-end hosting for services provided by third parties to their end users. Maintaining, securing, and expanding this infrastructure is expensive and complex, and requires development of principles for datacenter builds in geographies with higher safety and reliability risks. It requires that we maintain an Internet connectivity infrastructure and storage and compute capacity that is robust and reliable within competitive and regulatory constraints that continue to evolve. Inefficiencies or operational failures, including temporary or permanent loss of customer data, outages, insufficient Internet connectivity, insufficient or unavailable power or water supply, or inadequate storage and compute capacity could diminish the quality of our products, services, and user experience, resulting in contractual liability, claims by customers and other third parties, regulatory actions, damage to our reputation, and loss of current and potential users, subscribers, and advertisers, each of which may adversely affect our business, operations, financial condition, and results of operations.
We may experience quality or supply problems. There are limited suppliers for certain device and datacenter components. We continue to identify and evaluate opportunities to expand our datacenter locations and increase our server capacity to meet the evolving needs of our customers, particularly given the growing demand for AI services. Capacity available to us may be affected as competitors use some of the same suppliers and materials for hardware components. If components are delayed or become unavailable, whether because of supplier capacity constraint, industry shortages, legal or regulatory changes that restrict supply sources, or other reasons, we may not obtain timely replacement supplies, resulting in reduced sales or inadequate datacenter capacity to support the delivery and continued development of our products and services. Component shortages, excess or obsolete inventory, or price reductions resulting in inventory adjustments may increase our cost of revenue. Datacenter servers, Xbox consoles, Surface devices, and other hardware are assembled in Asia and other geographies that may be subject to disruptions in the supply chain, resulting in shortages which may adversely affect our business, operations, financial condition, and results of operations.
Our software products and services also may experience quality or reliability problems. The highly sophisticated software we develop may contain bugs and other defects that interfere with their intended operation. Our customers increasingly rely on us for critical business functions and multiple workloads. Many of our products and services are interdependent on one another. Our products and services may be impacted by interaction with third-party products and services. Our customers may also utilize their own or third-party products and services whose reliability is dependent on interaction with our products and services. Each of these circumstances potentially magnifies the impact of quality or reliability issues. Any defects we do not detect and fix in pre-release testing could cause reduced sales, damage to our reputation, repair or remediation costs, delays in the release of new products or versions, or legal liability, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations. Although our license agreements typically contain provisions that eliminate or limit our exposure to liability, there is no assurance these provisions will withstand legal challenge.
Our hardware products such as Xbox consoles, Surface devices, and other devices we design and market are highly complex. Failure to prevent, detect, or address defects in design, manufacture, or associated software could result in recalls, safety alerts, or product liability claims, which could adversely affect our business and results of operations.
27PART I
Item 1ALEGAL, REGULATORY, AND LITIGATION RISKS
Government enforcement under competition laws and new market regulation may limit how we design and market our products. Government agencies closely scrutinize us under U.S. and foreign competition laws. Governments are actively enforcing competition laws and regulations and enacting new regulations to intervene in digital markets, and this includes markets such as the EU, the United Kingdom, the U.S., and China. Some jurisdictions also allow competitors or consumers to assert claims of anti-competitive conduct. U.S. and foreign antitrust authorities have previously brought enforcement actions and continue to scrutinize our business.
For example, the European Commission (“the Commission”) has designated Windows and LinkedIn as core platform services subject to obligations under the EU Digital Markets Act, which prohibits certain self-preferencing behaviors and places limitations on certain data use among other obligations. The Commission also continues to closely scrutinize the design of high-volume Microsoft products and the terms on which we make certain technologies used in these products, such as file formats, programming interfaces, and protocols, available to other companies. Flagship product releases such as Microsoft 365 and Windows can receive significant scrutiny under EU or other competition laws.
Our portfolio of first-party devices continues to grow; at the same time, our OEM partners offer a large variety of devices for our platforms. As a result, we increasingly both cooperate and compete with our OEM partners, creating a risk that we fail to do so in compliance with competition rules. Regulatory scrutiny in this area may increase. Certain foreign governments, particularly in China and other countries in Asia, have advanced arguments under their competition laws that exert downward pressure on royalties for our intellectual property.
Competition law enforcement actions and court decisions along with new market regulations may result in fines or hinder our ability to provide the benefits of our software to consumers and businesses, reducing the attractiveness of our products and the revenue that comes from them. New competition law actions or obligations under market regulation schemes could be initiated, potentially using previous actions as precedent. The outcome of such actions, or steps taken to avoid them, could adversely affect us in a variety of ways, including causing us to withdraw products from or modify products for certain markets, decreasing the value of our assets, adversely affecting our ability to monetize our products, or inhibiting our ability to consummate acquisition or impose conditions on acquisitions that may reduce their value, which may adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Laws and regulations relating to anti-corruption and trade could result in increased costs, fines, criminal penalties, or reputational damage. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”) and other anti-corruption laws and regulations (“Anti-Corruption Laws”) prohibit corrupt payments by our employees, vendors, or agents, and the accounting provisions of the FCPA require us to maintain accurate books and records and adequate internal controls. From time to time, we receive inquiries from authorities in the U.S. and elsewhere which may be based on reports from employees and others about our business activities outside the U.S. and our compliance with Anti-Corruption Laws. Periodically, we receive such reports directly and investigate them, and also cooperate with investigations by U.S. and foreign law enforcement authorities. An example of increasing international regulatory complexity is the EU Whistleblower Directive, initiated in 2021, which presents compliance challenges as it is implemented in different forms by EU member states. Most countries in which we operate also have competition laws that prohibit competitors from colluding or otherwise attempting to reduce competition between themselves. While we devote substantial resources to our U.S. and international compliance programs and have implemented policies, training, and internal controls designed to reduce the risk of corrupt payments and collusive activity, our employees, partners, vendors, or agents may violate our policies. Our failure to comply with Anti-Corruption Laws or competition laws could result in significant fines and penalties, criminal sanctions against us, our officers, or our employees, prohibitions on the conduct of our business, and damage to our reputation, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
28PART I
Item 1AIncreasing trade laws, policies, sanctions, and other regulatory requirements also affect our operations in and outside the U.S. relating to trade and investment. Economic sanctions in the U.S., the EU, and other countries prohibit most business with restricted entities or countries. U.S. export controls restrict Microsoft from offering many of its products and services to, or making investments in, certain entities in specified countries. U.S. import controls restrict us from integrating certain information and communication technologies into our supply chain and allow for government review of transactions involving information and communications technology from countries determined to be foreign adversaries. Supply chain regulations may impact the availability of goods or result in additional regulatory scrutiny. Periods of intense diplomatic or armed conflict, such as the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, may result in (1) new and rapidly evolving sanctions and trade restrictions, which may impair trade with sanctioned individuals and countries, and (2) negative impacts to regional trade ecosystems among our customers, partners, and us. Non-compliance with sanctions as well as general ecosystem disruptions could result in reputational harm, operational delays, monetary fines, loss of revenue, increased costs, loss of export privileges, or criminal sanctions, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Laws and regulations relating to the handling of personal data may impede the adoption of our services or result in increased costs, legal claims, fines against us, or reputational damage. The growth of our Internet- and cloud-based services internationally relies increasingly on the movement of data across national boundaries. Legal requirements relating to the collection, storage, handling, and transfer of personal data continue to evolve. For example, while the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (“DPF”) has been recognized as adequate under EU law to allow transfers of personal data from the EU to certified companies in the U.S., the DPF is subject to further legal challenge which could cause the legal requirements for data transfers from the EU to be uncertain. EU data protection authorities have and may again block the use of certain U.S.-based services that involve the transfer of data to the U.S. In the EU and other markets, potential new rules and restrictions on the flow of data across borders could increase the cost and complexity of delivering our products and services. In addition, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), which applies to all of our activities conducted from an establishment in the EU or related to products and services offered in the EU, imposes a range of compliance obligations regarding the handling of personal data. More recently, the EU has been developing new requirements related to the use of data, including in the Digital Markets Act, the Digital Services Act, and the Data Act, that add additional rules and restriction on the use of data in our products and services. Engineering efforts to build and maintain capabilities to facilitate compliance with these laws involve substantial expense and the diversion of engineering resources from other projects. We might experience reduced demand for our offerings if we are unable to engineer products that meet our legal duties or help our customers meet their obligations under these and other data regulations, or if our implementation to comply makes our offerings less attractive. Compliance with these obligations depends in part on how particular regulators interpret and apply them. If we fail to comply, or if regulators assert we have failed to comply (including in response to complaints made by customers), it may lead to regulatory enforcement actions, which can result in significant monetary penalties, private lawsuits, reputational damage, blockage of product offerings or of international data transfers, and loss of customers. The highest fines assessed under GDPR have recently been increasing, especially against large technology companies, and European data protection authorities have taken action to block or remove services from their markets. Jurisdictions around the world, such as China, India, and states in the U.S. have adopted, or are considering adopting or expanding, laws and regulations imposing obligations regarding the collection, handling, and transfer of personal data.
Our investment in gaining insights from data is becoming central to the value of the services we deliver to customers, including AI services, to operational efficiency and key opportunities in monetization, and to customer perceptions of quality. Our ability to use data in this way may be constrained by regulatory developments that impede realizing the expected return from this investment. Ongoing legal analyses, reviews, and inquiries by regulators of Microsoft practices, or relevant practices of other organizations, may result in burdensome or inconsistent requirements, including data sovereignty and localization requirements, affecting the location, movement, collection, and use of our customer and internal employee data as well as the management of that data. Compliance with applicable laws and regulations regarding personal data may require changes in services, business practices, or internal systems that result in increased costs, lower revenue, reduced efficiency, or greater difficulty in competing with foreign-based firms. Compliance with data regulations might limit our ability to innovate or offer certain features and functionality in some jurisdictions where we operate. Failure to comply with existing or new rules may result in significant penalties or orders to stop the alleged noncompliant activity, negative publicity, and diversion of management time and effort.
29PART I
Item 1AExisting and increasing legal and regulatory requirements could adversely affect our results of operations. We are subject to a wide range of laws, regulations, and legal requirements in the U.S. and globally, including those that may apply to our products and online services offerings, and those that impose requirements related to user privacy, telecommunications, data storage and protection, digital accessibility, advertising, and online content. Laws in several jurisdictions, including EU Member State laws under the European Electronic Communications Code, increasingly define certain of our services as regulated telecommunications services. This trend may continue and will result in these offerings being subject to additional data protection, security, law enforcement surveillance, and other obligations. Regulators and private litigants may assert that our collection, use, and management of customer data and other information is inconsistent with their laws and regulations, including laws that apply to the tracking of users via technology such as cookies. In addition, laws requiring us to retrieve and produce customer data in response to compulsory legal demands from law enforcement and governmental authorities are expanding and the requests we are experiencing are increasing in volume and complexity. New environmental, social, and governance laws and regulations are expanding mandatory disclosure, reporting, and diligence requirements. Legislative or regulatory action relating to cybersecurity requirements may increase the costs to develop, implement, or secure our products and services. Legislative and regulatory action is emerging in the areas of AI and content moderation, which could increase costs or restrict opportunity. For example, the EU’s AI Act may increase costs or impact the provision or operation of our AI models and services in the European market.
How these laws and regulations apply to our business is often unclear, subject to change over time, and sometimes may be inconsistent from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In addition, governments’ approach to enforcement, and our products and services, are continuing to evolve. Compliance with existing, expanding, or new laws and regulations may involve significant costs or require changes in products or business practices that could adversely affect our results of operations. Noncompliance could result in the imposition of penalties, criminal sanctions, or orders we cease the alleged noncompliant activity. In addition, there is increasing pressure from advocacy groups, regulators, competitors, customers, and other stakeholders across many of these areas. If our products do not meet customer expectations or legal requirements, we could face regulatory or legal actions, and our business, operations, financial condition, and results of operations could be adversely affected.
We have claims and lawsuits against us that may result in adverse outcomes. We are subject to a variety of claims and lawsuits. These claims may arise from a wide variety of business practices and initiatives, including major new product releases, AI services, significant business transactions, warranty or product claims, employment practices, and regulation. As we continue to expand our business and offerings, we may experience new and novel legal claims. Adverse outcomes in some or all of these claims may result in significant monetary damages or injunctive relief that could adversely affect our ability to conduct our business. Litigation and other claims are subject to inherent uncertainties and management’s view of these matters may change in the future. A material adverse impact to our financial condition and results of operations could occur for the period in which the effect of an unfavorable outcome becomes probable and reasonably estimable.
Our business with government customers may present additional uncertainties. We derive substantial revenue from government contracts. Government contracts generally can present risks and challenges not present in private commercial agreements. For instance, we may be subject to government audits and investigations relating to these contracts, we could be suspended or debarred as a governmental contractor, we could incur civil and criminal fines and penalties, and under certain circumstances contracts may be rescinded. Some agreements may allow a government to terminate without cause and provide for higher liability limits for certain losses. Some contracts may be subject to periodic funding approval, reductions, cancellations, or delays which could adversely impact public-sector demand for our products and services. These events could negatively impact our financial condition, results of operations, and reputation.
We may have additional tax liabilities. We are subject to income taxes in the U.S. and many foreign jurisdictions. Significant judgment is required in determining our worldwide provision for income taxes. In the course of our business, there are many transactions and calculations where the ultimate tax determination is uncertain. We may recognize additional tax expense and be subject to additional tax liabilities due to changes in tax laws, regulations, and administrative practices and principles, including changes to the global tax framework, in various jurisdictions. In recent years, multiple domestic and international tax proposals were proposed to impose greater tax burdens on large multinational enterprises. For example, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development continues to advance proposals or guidance in international taxation, including the establishment of a global minimum tax.
30PART I
Item 1AWe are regularly under audit by tax authorities in different jurisdictions. Although we believe that our provision for income taxes and our tax estimates are reasonable, tax authorities may disagree with certain positions we have taken. In addition, economic and political pressures to increase tax revenue in various jurisdictions may make resolving tax disputes favorably more difficult. We are currently under Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) audit for prior tax years and have received Notices of Proposed Adjustment (“NOPAs”) from the IRS for the tax years 2004 to 2013. The primary issues in the NOPAs relate to intercompany transfer pricing. In the NOPAs, the IRS is seeking an additional tax payment of $28.9 billion plus penalties and interest. The final resolution of the proposed adjustments, and other audits or litigation, may differ from the amounts recorded in our consolidated financial statements and adversely affect our results of operations in the period or periods in which that determination is made.
We earn a significant amount of our operating income outside the U.S. A change in the mix of earnings and losses in countries with differing statutory tax rates, changes in our business or structure, or the expiration of or disputes about certain tax agreements in a particular country may result in higher effective tax rates for the company. In addition, changes in U.S. federal and state or international tax laws applicable to corporate multinationals, other global fundamental law changes currently being considered by many countries, including in the U.S., and changes in taxing jurisdictions’ administrative interpretations, decisions, policies, and positions may materially adversely affect our financial condition and results of operations.
We are subject to evolving sustainability regulatory requirements and expectations, which exposes us to increased costs and legal and reputational risks. Laws, regulations, and policies relating to environmental, social, and governance matters are being developed and formalized in Europe, the U.S., and elsewhere, which may include specific, target-driven frameworks and disclosure requirements. In addition, we have established and publicly announced goals and commitments to become carbon negative, water positive, zero waste, and protect more land than we use. Any failure or perceived failure to pursue or fulfill our sustainability goals and commitments or to satisfy various sustainability reporting standards or regulatory requirements within the timelines we announce, or at all, could result in claims and lawsuits, regulatory actions, or damage to our reputation, each of which may adversely affect our business, operations, financial condition, and results of operations.INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RISKSWe face risks related to the protection and utilization of our intellectual property that may result in our business and operating results being harmed. Protecting our intellectual property rights and combating unlicensed copying and use of our software, source code, and other intellectual property on a global basis is difficult. Similarly, the absence of harmonized patent laws makes it more difficult to ensure consistent respect for patent rights.
Changes in the law may continue to weaken our ability to prevent the use of patented technology. Our increasing engagement with open source software will also cause us to license our intellectual property rights broadly in certain situations. If we are unable to protect our intellectual property, our results of operations may be adversely affected.
Source code, the detailed program commands for our operating systems and other software programs, is critical to our business. If our source code leaks, we might lose future trade secret protection for that code. It may then become easier for third parties to compete with our products by copying functionality, which could adversely affect our results of operations. Unauthorized access to or disclosure of source code or other intellectual property also could increase the security risks described elsewhere in these risk factors.
Third parties may claim that we infringe their intellectual property. From time to time, others claim we infringe their intellectual property rights, including current copyright infringement and other claims arising from AI training and output. To resolve these claims, we may enter into royalty-bearing data access or licensing agreements on terms that are less favorable than currently available, stop selling or redesign affected products or services, or pay damages to satisfy indemnification commitments with our customers. Adverse outcomes could also include monetary damages or injunctive relief that may limit or prevent importing, marketing, and selling our products or services that have infringing technologies. We have paid significant amounts to settle claims related to the use of technology and intellectual property rights and to procure intellectual property rights as part of our strategy to manage this risk, and may continue to do so, which could adversely affect our results of operations.
31
PART I
Item 1AGENERAL RISKSIf our reputation or our brands are damaged, our business and results of operations may be harmed . Our reputation and brands are globally recognized and are important to our business. Our reputation and brands affect our ability to attract and retain consumer, business, and public-sector customers. There are numerous ways our reputation or brands could be damaged. These include product safety or quality issues, our environmental impact and sustainability, supply chain practices, or human rights record. We may experience backlash from customers, government entities, advocacy groups, employees, and other stakeholders that disagree with our product offering decisions, public policy positions, or corporate philanthropic initiatives. Damage to our reputation or our brands may occur from, among other things:• The introduction of new features, products, services, or terms of service that customers, users, or partners do not like.• Public scrutiny of our decisions regarding user privacy, data practices, content, or development and deployment of AI.
• Data security breaches, cybersecurity incidents, responsible AI failures, compliance failures, or actions of partners or individual employees.
Social media may increase the likelihood, speed, and magnitude of negative brand events. If our brands or reputation are damaged, it could adversely affect our business, results of operations, or ability to attract the most highly qualified employees.
Adverse economic or market conditions may harm our business. Worsening economic conditions, including inflation, recession, pandemic, or other changes in economic conditions, may cause lower IT spending and adversely affect our results of operations. If demand for PCs, servers, and other computing devices declines, or consumer or business spending for those products declines, our results of operations may be adversely affected.Our product distribution system relies on an extensive partner and retail network. OEMs building devices that run our software have also been a significant means of distribution. The impact of economic conditions on our partners, such as the bankruptcy of a major distributor, OEM, or retailer, could cause sales channel disruption.
Challenging economic conditions also may impair the ability of our customers to pay for products and services they have purchased. As a result, allowances for doubtful accounts and write-offs of accounts receivable may increase.We maintain an investment portfolio of various holdings, types, and maturities. These investments are subject to general credit, liquidity, market, and interest rate risks, which may be exacerbated by market downturns or events that affect global financial markets. A significant part of our investment portfolio comprises U.S. government securities. If global financial markets decline for long periods, or if there is a downgrade of the U.S. government credit rating due to an actual or threatened default on government debt, our investment portfolio may be adversely affected and we could determine that more of our investments have experienced a decline in fair value, requiring impairment charges that could adversely affect our financial condition and results of operations.
Catastrophic events or geopolitical conditions may disrupt our business. A disruption or failure of our systems, operations, or supply chain because of a major earthquake, weather event, cyberattack, terrorist attack, pandemic, or other catastrophic event could cause delays in completing sales, providing services, or performing other critical functions. Our corporate headquarters, a significant portion of our research and development activities, and certain other essential business operations are in the Seattle, Washington area, and we have other business operations in the Silicon Valley area of California, both of which are seismically active regions. A catastrophic event that results in the destruction or disruption of any of our critical business or IT systems, or the infrastructure or systems they rely on, such as power grids, could harm our ability to conduct normal business operations or adversely affect our results of operations. Providing our customers with more services and solutions in the cloud puts a premium on the resilience of our systems and strength of our business continuity management plans and magnifies the potential negative consequences of prolonged service outages.
32PART I
Item 1AAbrupt political change, terrorist activity, and armed conflict, such as the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, pose economic and other risks, which may negatively impact our ability to sell to and collect from customers, increase our operating costs, or otherwise disrupt our operations in markets both directly and indirectly impacted by such events. These conditions also may add uncertainty to the timing and budget for technology investment decisions by our customers and may cause supply chain disruptions for hardware manufacturers. Geopolitical change may result in changing regulatory systems and requirements and market interventions that could impact our operating strategies, access to national, regional, and global markets, hiring, and profitability. Geopolitical instability may lead to sanctions and impact our ability to do business in some markets or with some public-sector customers. Any of these changes may negatively affect our results of operations.
The occurrence of regional epidemics or a global pandemic, such as COVID-19, may adversely affect our business, operations, financial condition, and results of operations. The extent to which global pandemics impact our business going forward will depend on factors such as the duration and scope of the pandemic; governmental, business, and individuals' actions in response to the pandemic; and the impact on economic activity, including the possibility of recession or financial market instability. Measures to contain a global pandemic may intensify other risks described in these Risk Factors.The long-term effects of climate change on the global economy and the IT industry in particular are unclear. Environmental regulations or changes in the supply, demand, or available sources of energy or other resources may affect the availability or cost of goods and services, including natural resources, necessary to run our business. Changes in climate where we operate may increase the costs of powering and cooling computer hardware we use to develop software and provide cloud-based services.Our global business exposes us to operational and economic risks. Our customers are located throughout the world and a significant part of our revenue comes from international sales. The global nature of our business creates operational, economic, and geopolitical risks. Global, regional, and local economic developments, monetary policy, inflation, and recession, as well as political and military disputes, may adversely affect our results of operations. In addition, our international growth strategy includes certain markets, the developing nature of which presents several risks, including deterioration of social, political, labor, or economic conditions in a country or region, and difficulties in staffing and managing foreign operations. Emerging nationalist and protectionist trends and concerns about human rights, the environment, and political expression in specific countries may significantly alter the trade and commercial environments. Changes to trade policy or agreements as a result of populism, protectionism, or economic nationalism may result in higher tariffs, local sourcing initiatives, and non-local sourcing restrictions, export controls, investment restrictions, or other developments that make it more difficult to sell our products in foreign countries. Disruptions of these kinds in developed or emerging markets could negatively impact demand for our products and services, impair our ability to operate in certain regions, or increase operating costs. Although we hedge a portion of our international currency exposure, significant fluctuations in foreign exchange rates between the U.S. dollar and foreign currencies may adversely affect our results of operations.
Our business depends on our ability to attract and retain talented employees. Our business is based on successfully attracting, training, and retaining talented employees representing diverse backgrounds, experiences, and skill sets. The market for highly skilled workers and leaders in our industry is extremely competitive. Maintaining our brand and reputation, as well as a diverse and inclusive work environment that enables all our employees to thrive, are important to our ability to recruit and retain employees. We are also limited in our ability to recruit internationally by restrictive domestic immigration laws. Restraints on the flow of technical and professional talent, including as a result of changes to U.S. immigration policies or laws, may inhibit our ability to adequately staff our research and development efforts. If we are less successful in our recruiting efforts, or if we cannot retain highly skilled workers and key leaders, our ability to develop and deliver successful products and services may be adversely affected. Effective succession planning is also important to our long-term success. Failure to ensure effective transfer of knowledge and smooth transitions involving key employees could hinder our strategic planning and execution. How employment-related laws are interpreted and applied to our workforce practices may result in increased operating costs and less flexibility in how we meet our workforce needs. Our global workforce is predominantly non-unionized, although we do have some employees in the U.S. and internationally who are represented by unions or works councils. In the U.S., there has been a general increase in workers exercising their right to form or join a union. The unionization of significant employee populations could result in higher costs and other operational changes necessary to respond to changing conditions and to establish new relationships with worker representatives.
33PART I
Item 7 · Management's Discussion & Analysis
+144 paragraphs −158 paragraphs ~144 changed
FY 2023-06-30 (earlier)
Item 7
ITEM 7. MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONSThe following Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations (“MD&A”) is intended to help the reader understand the results of operations and financial condition of Microsoft Corporation. MD&A is provided as a supplement to, and should be read in conjunction with, our consolidated financial statements and the accompanying Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K). This section generally discusses the results of our operations for the year ended June 30, 2023 compared to the year ended June 30, 2022. For a discussion of the year ended June 30 , 2022 compared to the year ended June 30, 2021, please refer to Part II, Item 7, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended June 30, 2022.OVERVIEWMicrosoft is a technology company whose mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. We strive to create local opportunity, growth, and impact in every country around the world. We are creating the platforms and tools, powered by artificial intelligence (“AI”), that deliver better, faster, and more effective solutions to support small and large business competitiveness, improve educational and health outcomes, grow public-sector efficiency, and empower human ingenuity.We generate revenue by offering a wide range of cloud-based solutions, content, and other services to people and businesses; licensing and supporting an array of software products; delivering relevant online advertising to a global audience; and designing and selling devices. Our most significant expenses are related to compensating employees; supporting and investing in our cloud-based services, including datacenter operations; designing, manufacturing, marketing, and selling our other products and services; and income taxes.Highlights from fiscal year 2023 compared with fiscal year 2022 included:
• Microsoft Cloud revenue increased 22% to $111.6 billion.
• Office Commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 10% driven by Office 365 Commercial growth of 13%.
• Office Consumer products and cloud services revenue increased 2% and Microsoft 365 Consumer subscribers increased to 67.0 million.
• LinkedIn revenue increased 10%.
• Dynamics products and cloud services revenue increased 16% driven by Dynamics 365 growth of 24%.
• Server products and cloud services revenue increased 19% driven by Azure and other cloud services growth of 29%.
• Windows original equipment manufacturer licensing (“Windows OEM”) revenue decreased 25%.
• Devices revenue decreased 24%.
• Windows Commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 5%.
• Xbox content and services revenue decreased 3%.
• Search and news advertising revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs increased 11%.
Industry Trends
Our industry is dynamic and highly competitive, with frequent changes in both technologies and business models. Each industry shift is an opportunity to conceive new products, new technologies, or new ideas that can further transform the industry and our business. At Microsoft, we push the boundaries of what is possible through a broad range of research and development activities that seek to identify and address the changing demands of customers and users, industry trends, and competitive forces.
40PART II
Item 7Economic Conditions, Challenges, and Risks
The markets for software, devices, and cloud-based services are dynamic and highly competitive. Our competitors are developing new software and devices, while also deploying competing cloud-based services for consumers and businesses. The devices and form factors customers prefer evolve rapidly, influencing how users access services in the cloud and, in some cases, the user’s choice of which suite of cloud-based services to use. Aggregate demand for our software, services, and devices is also correlated to global macroeconomic and geopolitical factors, which remain dynamic. We must continue to evolve and adapt over an extended time in pace with this changing environment.
The investments we are making in cloud and AI infrastructure and devices will continue to increase our operating costs and may decrease our operating margins. We continue to identify and evaluate opportunities to expand our datacenter locations and increase our server capacity to meet the evolving needs of our customers, particularly given the growing demand for AI services. Our datacenters depend on the availability of permitted and buildable land, predictable energy, networking supplies, and servers, including graphics processing units (“GPUs”) and other components. Our devices are primarily manufactured by third-party contract manufacturers. For the majority of our products, we have the ability to use other manufacturers if a current vendor becomes unavailable or unable to meet our requirements. However, some of our products contain certain components for which there are very few qualified suppliers. Extended disruptions at these suppliers could impact our ability to manufacture devices on time to meet consumer demand.
Our success is highly dependent on our ability to attract and retain qualified employees. We hire a mix of university and industry talent worldwide. We compete for talented individuals globally by offering an exceptional working environment, broad customer reach, scale in resources, the ability to grow one’s career across many different products and businesses, and competitive compensation and benefits.Our international operations provide a significant portion of our total revenue and expenses. Many of these revenue and expenses are denominated in currencies other than the U.S. dollar. As a result, changes in foreign exchange rates may significantly affect revenue and expenses. Fluctuations in the U.S. dollar relative to certain foreign currencies reduced reported revenue and expenses from our international operations in fiscal year 2023.
On January 18, 2023, we announced decisions we made to align our cost structure with our revenue and customer demand, prioritize our investments in strategic areas, and consolidate office space. As a result, we recorded a $1.2 billion charge in the second quarter of fiscal year 2023 (“Q2 charge”), which included employee severance expenses of $800 million, impairment charges resulting from changes to our hardware portfolio, and costs related to lease consolidation activities. First, we reduced our overall workforce by approximately 10,000 jobs through the third quarter of fiscal year 2023 related to the Q2 charge, which represents less than 5% of our total employee base. While we eliminated roles in some areas, we will continue to hire in key strategic areas. Second, we are allocating both our capital and talent to areas of secular growth and long-term competitiveness, while divesting in other areas. Third, we are consolidating our leases to create higher density across our workspaces, which impacted our financial results through the remainder of fiscal year 2023, and we may make similar decisions in future periods as we continue to evaluate our real estate needs.Refer to Risk Factors (Part I, Item 1A of this Form 10-K) for a discussion of these factors and other risks.
SeasonalityOur revenue fluctuates quarterly and is generally higher in the second and fourth quarters of our fiscal year. Second quarter revenue is driven by corporate year-end spending trends in our major markets and holiday season spending by consumers, and fourth quarter revenue is driven by the volume of multi-year on-premises contracts executed during the period.Change in Accounting EstimateIn July 2022, we completed an assessment of the useful lives of our server and network equipment. Due to investments in software that increased efficiencies in how we operate our server and network equipment, as well as advances in technology, we determined we should increase the estimated useful lives of both server and network equipment from four years to six years. This change in accounting estimate was effective beginning fiscal year 2023. Based on the carrying amount of server and network equipment included in property and equipment, net as of June 30, 2022, the effect of this change in estimate for fiscal year 2023 was an increase in operating income of $3.7 billion and net income of $3.0 billion, or $0.40 per both basic and diluted share.
41PART II
Item 7
Reportable SegmentsWe report our financial performance based on the following segments: Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing. The segment amounts included in MD&A are presented on a basis consistent with our internal management reporting. We have recast certain prior period amounts to conform to the way we internally manage and monitor our business.Additional information on our reportable segments is contained in Note 19 – Segment Information and Geographic Data of the Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K).
Metrics
We use metrics in assessing the performance of our business and to make informed decisions regarding the allocation of resources. We disclose metrics to enable investors to evaluate progress against our ambitions, provide transparency into performance trends, and reflect the continued evolution of our products and services. Our commercial and other business metrics are fundamentally connected based on how customers use our products and services. The metrics are disclosed in the MD&A or the Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K). Financial metrics are calculated based on financial results prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America (“GAAP”), and growth comparisons relate to the corresponding period of last fiscal year.In the first quarter of fiscal year 2023, we made updates to the presentation and method of calculation for certain metrics, most notably expanding our Surface metric into a broader Devices metric to incorporate additional revenue streams, along with other minor changes to align with how we manage our businesses.CommercialOur commercial business primarily consists of Server products and cloud services, Office Commercial, Windows Commercial, the commercial portion of LinkedIn, Enterprise Services, and Dynamics. Our commercial metrics allow management and investors to assess the overall health of our commercial business and include leading indicators of future performance.Commercial remaining performance obligation
Commercial portion of revenue allocated to remaining performance obligations, which includes unearned revenue and amounts that will be invoiced and recognized as revenue in future periodsMicrosoft Cloud revenueRevenue from Azure and other cloud services, Office 365 Commercial, the commercial portion of LinkedIn, Dynamics 365, and other commercial cloud properties
Microsoft Cloud gross margin percentage
Gross margin percentage for our Microsoft Cloud business42PART II
Item 7
Productivity and Business Processes and Intelligent Cloud
Metrics related to our Productivity and Business Processes and Intelligent Cloud segments assess the health of our core businesses within these segments. The metrics reflect our cloud and on-premises product strategies and trends.
Office Commercial products and cloud services revenue growthRevenue from Office Commercial products and cloud services (Office 365 subscriptions, the Office 365 portion of Microsoft 365 Commercial subscriptions, and Office licensed on-premises), comprising Office, Exchange, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Office 365 Security and Compliance, Microsoft Viva, and Microsoft 365 CopilotOffice Consumer products and cloud services revenue growthRevenue from Office Consumer products and cloud services, including Microsoft 365 Consumer subscriptions, Office licensed on-premises, and other Office servicesOffice 365 Commercial seat growth
The number of Office 365 Commercial seats at end of period where seats are paid users covered by an Office 365 Commercial subscription
Microsoft 365 Consumer subscribersThe number of Microsoft 365 Consumer subscribers at end of periodDynamics products and cloud services revenue growthRevenue from Dynamics products and cloud services, including Dynamics 365, comprising a set of intelligent, cloud-based applications across ERP, CRM (including Customer Insights), Power Apps, and Power Automate; and on-premises ERP and CRM applicationsLinkedIn revenue growth
Revenue from LinkedIn, including Talent Solutions, Marketing Solutions, Premium Subscriptions, and Sales Solutions
Server products and cloud services revenue growth
Revenue from Server products and cloud services, including Azure and other cloud services; SQL Server, Windows Server, Visual Studio, System Center, and related Client Access Licenses (“CALs”); and Nuance and GitHub
More Personal Computing
Metrics related to our More Personal Computing segment assess the performance of key lines of business within this segment. These metrics provide strategic product insights which allow us to assess the performance across our commercial and consumer businesses. As we have diversity of target audiences and sales motions within the Windows business, we monitor metrics that are reflective of those varying motions.
Windows OEM revenue growth
Revenue from sales of Windows Pro and non-Pro licenses sold through the OEM channel
Windows Commercial products and cloud services revenue growth
Revenue from Windows Commercial products and cloud services, comprising volume licensing of the Windows operating system, Windows cloud services, and other Windows commercial offerings
Devices revenue growth
Revenue from Devices, including Surface, HoloLens, and PC accessories
Xbox content and services revenue growthRevenue from Xbox content and services, comprising first- and third-party content (including games and in-game content), Xbox Game Pass and other subscriptions, Xbox Cloud Gaming, advertising, third-party disc royalties, and other cloud servicesSearch and news advertising revenue (ex TAC) growth
Revenue from search and news advertising excluding traffic acquisition costs (“TAC”) paid to Bing Ads network publishers and news partners43PART II
Item 7
SUMMARY RESULTS OF OPERATIONS
(In millions, except percentages and per share amounts)20232022Percentage Change
Revenue
$211,915$198,270
7%Gross margin146,052135,620
8%Operating income88,52383,383
6%Net income72,36172,738
(1)%Diluted earnings per share9.689.65
0%Adjusted gross margin (non-GAAP)146,204135,620
8%Adjusted operating income (non-GAAP)89,69483,383
8%Adjusted net income (non-GAAP)73,30769,447
6%Adjusted diluted earnings per share (non-GAAP)9.819.21
7%
Adjusted gross margin, operating income, net income, and diluted earnings per share (“EPS”) are non-GAAP financial measures. Current year non-GAAP financial measures exclude the impact of the Q2 charge, which includes employee severance expenses, impairment charges resulting from changes to our hardware portfolio, and costs related to lease consolidation activities. Prior year non-GAAP financial measures exclude the net income tax benefit related to transfer of intangible properties in the first quarter of fiscal year 2022. Refer to Note 12 – Income Taxes of the Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K) for further discussion. Refer to the Non-GAAP Financial Measures section below for a reconciliation of our financial results reported in accordance with GAAP to non-GAAP financial results.
Fiscal Year 2023 Compared with Fiscal Year 2022
Revenue increased $13.6 billion or 7% driven by growth in Intelligent Cloud and Productivity and Business Processes, offset in part by a decline in More Personal Computing. Intelligent Cloud revenue increased driven by Azure and other cloud services. Productivity and Business Processes revenue increased driven by Office 365 Commercial and LinkedIn. More Personal Computing revenue decreased driven by Windows and Devices.
Cost of revenue increased $3.2 billion or 5% driven by growth in Microsoft Cloud , offset in part by the change in accounting estimate.
Gross margin increased $10.4 billion or 8% driven by growth in Intelligent Cloud and Productivity and Business Processes and the change in accounting estimate, offset in part by a decline in More Personal Computing.
• Gross margin percentage increased slightly. Excluding the impact of the change in accounting estimate, gross margin percentage decreased 1 point driven by declines in Intelligent Cloud and More Personal Computing, offset in part by sales mix shift between our segments.
• Microsoft Cloud gross margin percentage increased 2 points to 72%. Excluding the impact of the change in accounting estimate, Microsoft Cloud gross margin percentage decreased slightly driven by a decline in Azure and other cloud services and sales mix shift to Azure and other cloud services , offset in part by improvement in Office 365 Commercial.
Operating expenses increased $5.3 billion or 10% driven by employee severance expenses, 2 points of growth from the Nuance and Xandr acquisitions, investments in cloud engineering, and LinkedIn.
Operating income increased $5.1 billion or 6% driven by growth in Productivity and Business Processes and Intelligent Cloud and the change in accounting estimate, offset in part by a decline in More Personal Computing.
Revenue, gross margin, and operating income included an unfavorable foreign currency impact of 4%, 4%, and 6%, respectively. Cost of revenue and operating expenses both included a favorable foreign currency impact of 2%.
Current year gross margin, operating income, net income, and diluted EPS were negatively impacted by the Q2 charge, which resulted in decreases of $152 million, $1.2 billion, $946 million, and $0.13, respectively. Prior year net income and diluted EPS were positively impacted by the net tax benefit related to the transfer of intangible properties, which resulted in an increase to net income and diluted EPS of $3.3 billion and $0.44, respectively.
44PART II
Item 7
SEGMENT RESULTS OF OPERATIONS
(In millions, except percentages)20232022Percentage Change
Revenue
Productivity and Business Processes
$69,274$63,364
9%Intelligent Cloud87,90774,965
17%More Personal Computing54,73459,941
(9)%Total
$211,915$198,270
7%Operating Income
Productivity and Business Processes
$34,189$29,690
15%Intelligent Cloud37,88433,203
14%More Personal Computing16,45020,490
(20)%Total
$88,523$83,383
6%Reportable SegmentsFiscal Year 2023 Compared with Fiscal Year 2022Productivity and Business ProcessesRevenue increased $5.9 billion or 9%.
• Office Commercial products and cloud services revenue increased $3.7 billion or 10%. Office 365 Commercial revenue grew 13% with seat growth of 11%, driven by small and medium business and frontline worker offerings, as well as growth in revenue per user. Office Commercial products revenue declined 21% driven by continued customer shift to cloud offerings.
• Office Consumer products and cloud services revenue increased $140 million or 2%. Microsoft 365 Consumer subscribers grew 12% to 67.0 million.
• LinkedIn revenue increased $1.3 billion or 10% driven by Talent Solutions.
• Dynamics products and cloud services revenue increased $750 million or 16% driven by Dynamics 365 growth of 24%.
Operating income increased $4.5 billion or 15%.
• Gross margin increased $5.8 billion or 12% driven by growth in Office 365 Commercial and LinkedIn, as well as the change in accounting estimate. Gross margin percentage increased. Excluding the impact of the change in accounting estimate, gross margin percentage increased slightly driven by improvement in Office 365 Commercial, offset in part by sales mix shift to cloud offerings.
• Operating expenses increased $1.3 billion or 7% driven by investment in LinkedIn and employee severance expenses.
Revenue, gross margin, and operating income included an unfavorable foreign currency impact of 5%, 5%, and 8%, respectively.Intelligent CloudRevenue increased $12.9 billion or 17%.
• Server products and cloud services revenue increased $12.6 billion or 19% driven by Azure and other cloud services. Azure and other cloud services revenue grew 29% driven by growth in our consumption-based services. Server products revenue decreased 1%.
• Enterprise Services revenue increased $315 million or 4% driven by growth in Enterprise Support Services, offset in part by a decline in Industry Solutions (formerly Microsoft Consulting Services).
45PART II
Item 7Operating income increased $4.7 billion or 14%.
• Gross margin increased $8.9 billion or 17% driven by growth in Azure and other cloud services and the change in accounting estimate. Gross margin percentage decreased slightly. Excluding the impact of the change in accounting estimate, gross margin percentage decreased 3 points driven by sales mix shift to Azure and other cloud services and a decline in Azure and other cloud services.
• Operating expenses increased $4.2 billion or 21% driven by investments in Azure, 4 points of growth from the Nuance acquisition, and employee severance expenses.
Revenue, gross margin, and operating income included an unfavorable foreign currency impact of 4%, 4%, and 6%, respectively. Operating expenses included a favorable foreign currency impact of 2%.More Personal ComputingRevenue decreased $5.2 billion or 9%.
• Windows revenue decreased $3.2 billion or 13% driven by a decrease in Windows OEM. Windows OEM revenue decreased 25% as elevated channel inventory levels continued to drive additional weakness beyond declining PC demand. Windows Commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 5% driven by demand for Microsoft 365.
• Devices revenue decreased $1.8 billion or 24% as elevated channel inventory levels continued to drive additional weakness beyond declining PC demand.
• Gaming revenue decreased $764 million or 5% driven by declines in Xbox hardware and Xbox content and services. Xbox hardware revenue decreased 11% driven by lower volume and price of consoles sold. Xbox content and services revenue decreased 3% driven by a decline in first-party content, offset in part by growth in Xbox Game Pass.
• Search and news advertising revenue increased $617 million or 5%. Search and news advertising revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs increased 11% driven by higher search volume and the Xandr acquisition.
Operating income decreased $4.0 billion or 20%.
• Gross margin decreased $4.2 billion or 13% driven by declines in Windows and Devices. Gross margin percentage decreased driven by a decline in Devices.
• Operating expenses decreased $195 million or 2% driven by a decline in Devices, offset in part by investments in Search and news advertising, including 2 points of growth from the Xandr acquisition.
Revenue, gross margin, and operating income included an unfavorable foreign currency impact of 3%, 4%, and 6%, respectively. Operating expenses included a favorable foreign currency impact of 2%.
46
PART II
Item 7OPERATING EXPENSES
Research and Development
(In millions, except percentages)20232022Percentage Change
Research and development
$27,195$24,512
11%As a percent of revenue13%12%1pptResearch and development expenses include payroll, employee benefits, stock-based compensation expense, and other headcount-related expenses associated with product development. Research and development expenses also include third-party development and programming costs and the amortization of purchased software code and services content.Fiscal Year 2023 Compared with Fiscal Year 2022
Research and development expenses increased $2.7 billion or 11% driven by investments in cloud engineering and LinkedIn.Sales and Marketing
(In millions, except percentages)20232022Percentage Change
Sales and marketing
$22,759$21,825
4%As a percent of revenue11%11%
0pptSales and marketing expenses include payroll, employee benefits, stock-based compensation expense, and other headcount-related expenses associated with sales and marketing personnel, and the costs of advertising, promotions, trade shows, seminars, and other programs.Fiscal Year 2023 Compared with Fiscal Year 2022
Sales and marketing expenses increased $934 million or 4% driven by 3 points of growth from the Nuance and Xandr acquisitions and investments in commercial sales, offset in part by a decline in Windows advertising. Sales and marketing included a favorable foreign currency impact of 2%.General and Administrative
(In millions, except percentages)20232022Percentage Change
General and administrative
$7,575$5,900
28%As a percent of revenue4%3%1pptGeneral and administrative expenses include payroll, employee benefits, stock-based compensation expense, employee severance expense incurred as part of a corporate program, and other headcount-related expenses associated with finance, legal, facilities, certain human resources and other administrative personnel, certain taxes, and legal and other administrative fees.Fiscal Year 2023 Compared with Fiscal Year 2022
General and administrative expenses increased $1.7 billion or 28% driven by employee severance expenses and a charge related to a non-public preliminary draft decision provided by the Irish Data Protection Commission. General and administrative included a favorable foreign currency impact of 2%.
47
PART II
Item 7OTHER INCOME (EXPENSE), NET
The components of other income (expense), net were as follows:
(In millions)
Year Ended June 30,20232022Interest and dividends income
$2,994$2,094Interest expense(1,968
)(2,063)Net recognized gains on investments260461Net losses on derivatives(456
)(52
)Net gains (losses) on foreign currency remeasurements181
(75)Other, net(223
)(32
)Total
$788$333
We use derivative instruments to manage risks related to foreign currencies, equity prices, interest rates, and credit; enhance investment returns; and facilitate portfolio diversification. Gains and losses from changes in fair values of derivatives that are not designated as hedging instruments are primarily recognized in other income (expense), net.
Fiscal Year 2023 Compared with Fiscal Year 2022
Interest and dividends income increased due to higher yields, offset in part by lower portfolio balances. Interest expense decreased due to a decrease in outstanding long-term debt due to debt maturities. Net recognized gains on investments decreased due to lower gains on equity securities and higher losses on fixed income securities. Net losses on derivatives increased due to losses related to managing strategic investments.INCOME TAXES
Effective Tax RateOur effective tax rate for fiscal years 2023 and 2022 was 19% and 13%, respectively. The increase in our effective tax rate was primarily due to a $3.3 billion net income tax benefit in the first quarter of fiscal year 2022 related to the transfer of intangible properties and a decrease in tax benefits relating to stock-based compensation.
In the first quarter of fiscal year 2022, we transferred certain intangible properties from our Puerto Rico subsidiary to the U.S. The transfer of intangible properties resulted in a $3.3 billion net income tax benefit in the first quarter of fiscal year 2022, as the value of future U.S. tax deductions exceeded the current tax liability from the U.S. global intangible low-taxed income tax.Our effective tax rate was lower than the U.S. federal statutory rate, primarily due to earnings taxed at lower rates in foreign jurisdictions resulting from producing and distributing our products and services through our foreign regional operations center in Ireland.The mix of income before income taxes between the U.S. and foreign countries impacted our effective tax rate as a result of the geographic distribution of, and customer demand for, our products and services. In fiscal year 2023, our U.S. income before income taxes was $52.9 billion and our foreign income before income taxes was $36.4 billion. In fiscal year 2022, our U.S. income before income taxes was $47.8 billion and our foreign income before income taxes was $35.9 billion.Uncertain Tax PositionsWe settled a portion of the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) audit for tax years 2004 to 2006 in fiscal year 2011. In February 2012, the IRS withdrew its 2011 Revenue Agents Report related to unresolved issues for tax years 2004 to 2006 and reopened the audit phase of the examination. We also settled a portion of the IRS audit for tax years 2007 to 2009 in fiscal year 2016, and a portion of the IRS audit for tax years 2010 to 2013 in fiscal year 2018. In the second quarter of fiscal year 2021, we settled an additional portion of the IRS audits for tax years 2004 to 2013 and made a payment of $1.7 billion, including tax and interest. We remain under audit for tax years 2004 to 2017.
48PART II
Item 7As of June 30, 2023, the primary unresolved issues for the IRS audits relate to transfer pricing, which could have a material impact in our consolidated financial statements when the matters are resolved. We believe our allowances for income tax contingencies are adequate. We have not received a proposed assessment for the unresolved key transfer pricing issues. We do not expect a final resolution of these issues in the next 12 months. Based on the information currently available, we do not anticipate a significant increase or decrease to our tax contingencies for these issues within the next 12 months.
We are subject to income tax in many jurisdictions outside the U.S. Our operations in certain jurisdictions remain subject to examination for tax years 1996 to 2022, some of which are currently under audit by local tax authorities. The resolution of each of these audits is not expected to be material to our consolidated financial statements.
NON-GAAP FINANCIAL MEASURES
Adjusted gross margin, operating income, net income, and diluted EPS are non-GAAP financial measures. Current year non-GAAP financial measures exclude the impact of the Q2 charge, which includes employee severance expenses, impairment charges resulting from changes to our hardware portfolio, and costs related to lease consolidation activities. Prior year non-GAAP financial measures exclude the net income tax benefit related to transfer of intangible properties in the first quarter of fiscal year 2022. We believe these non-GAAP measures aid 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. These non-GAAP financial measures presented should not be considered a substitute for, or superior to, the measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP.The following table reconciles our financial results reported in accordance with GAAP to non-GAAP financial results:
(In millions, except percentages and per share amounts)20232022Percentage Change
Gross margin
$146,052$135,620
8%Severance, hardware-related impairment, and lease consolidation costs1520*
Adjusted gross margin (non-GAAP)
$146,204$135,620
8%Operating income
$88,523$83,383
6%Severance, hardware-related impairment, and lease consolidation costs1,1710*
Adjusted operating income (non-GAAP)
$89,694$83,383
8%Net income
$72,361$72,738
(1)%Severance, hardware-related impairment, and lease consolidation costs9460*Net income tax benefit related to transfer of intangible properties
0
(3,291
)
*Adjusted net income (non-GAAP)
$73,307$69,447
6%Diluted earnings per share
$9.68$9.65
0%Severance, hardware-related impairment, and lease consolidation costs0.130*Net income tax benefit related to transfer of intangible properties
0
(0.44
)
*Adjusted diluted earnings per share (non-GAAP)
$9.81$9.21
7%* Not meaningful.49
PART II
Item 7LIQUIDITY AND CAPITAL RESOURCES
We expect existing cash, cash equivalents, short-term investments, cash flows from operations, and access to capital markets to continue to be sufficient to fund our operating activities and cash commitments for investing and financing activities, such as dividends, share repurchases, debt maturities, material capital expenditures, and the transition tax related to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (“TCJA”), for at least the next 12 months and thereafter for the foreseeable future.
Cash, Cash Equivalents, and InvestmentsCash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments totaled $111.3 billion and $104.8 billion as of June 30, 2023 and 2022, respectively. Equity investments were $9.9 billion and $6.9 billion as of June 30, 2023 and 2022, respectively. Our short-term investments are primarily intended to facilitate liquidity and capital preservation. They consist predominantly of highly liquid investment-grade fixed-income securities, diversified among industries and individual issuers. The investments are predominantly U.S. dollar-denominated securities, but also include foreign currency-denominated securities to diversify risk. Our fixed-income investments are exposed to interest rate risk and credit risk. The credit risk and average maturity of our fixed-income portfolio are managed to achieve economic returns that correlate to certain fixed-income indices. The settlement risk related to these investments is insignificant given that the short-term investments held are primarily highly liquid investment-grade fixed-income securities.Valuation
In general, and where applicable, we use quoted prices in active markets for identical assets or liabilities to determine the fair value of our financial instruments. This pricing methodology applies to our Level 1 investments, such as U.S. government securities, common and preferred stock, and mutual funds. If quoted prices in active markets for identical assets or liabilities are not available to determine fair value, then we use quoted prices for similar assets and liabilities or inputs other than the quoted prices that are observable either directly or indirectly. This pricing methodology applies to our Level 2 investments, such as commercial paper, certificates of deposit, U.S. agency securities, foreign government bonds, mortgage- and asset-backed securities, corporate notes and bonds, and municipal securities. Level 3 investments are valued using internally-developed models with unobservable inputs. Assets and liabilities measured at fair value on a recurring basis using unobservable inputs are an immaterial portion of our portfolio.A majority of our investments are priced by pricing vendors and are generally Level 1 or Level 2 investments as these vendors either provide a quoted market price in an active market or use observable inputs for their pricing without applying significant adjustments. Broker pricing is used mainly when a quoted price is not available, the investment is not priced by our pricing vendors, or when a broker price is more reflective of fair values in the market in which the investment trades. Our broker-priced investments are generally classified as Level 2 investments because the broker prices these investments based on similar assets without applying significant adjustments. In addition, all our broker-priced investments have a sufficient level of trading volume to demonstrate that the fair values used are appropriate for these investments. Our fair value processes include controls that are designed to ensure appropriate fair values are recorded. These controls include model validation, review of key model inputs, analysis of period-over-period fluctuations, and independent recalculation of prices where appropriate.
Cash Flows
Cash from operations decreased $1.5 billion to $87.6 billion for fiscal year 2023, mainly due to an increase in cash paid to employees and suppliers and cash used to pay income taxes, offset in part by an increase in cash received from customers. Cash used in financing decreased $14.9 billion to $43.9 billion for fiscal year 2023, mainly due to a $10.5 billion decrease in common stock repurchases and a $6.3 billion decrease in repayments of debt, offset in part by a $1.7 billion increase in dividends paid. Cash used in investing decreased $7.6 billion to $22.7 billion for fiscal year 2023, due to a $20.4 billion decrease in cash used for acquisitions of companies, net of cash acquired, and purchases of intangible and other assets, offset in part by a $8.2 billion decrease in cash from net investment purchases, sales, and maturities, and a $4.2 billion increase in additions to property and equipment.
50PART II
Item 7Debt ProceedsWe issue debt to take advantage of favorable pricing and liquidity in the debt markets, reflecting our credit rating and the low interest rate environment. The proceeds of these issuances were or will be used for general corporate purposes, which may include, among other things, funding for working capital, capital expenditures, repurchases of capital stock, acquisitions, and repayment of existing debt. Refer to Note 11 – Debt of the Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K) for further discussion.Unearned Revenue
Unearned revenue comprises mainly unearned revenue related to volume licensing programs, which may include Software Assurance (“SA”) and cloud services. Unearned revenue is generally invoiced annually at the beginning of each contract period for multi-year agreements and recognized ratably over the coverage period. Unearned revenue also includes payments for other offerings for which we have been paid in advance and earn the revenue when we transfer control of the product or service. Refer to Note 1 – Accounting Policies of the Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K) for further discussion.The following table outlines the expected future recognition of unearned revenue as of June 30, 2023:(In millions)
Three Months EndingSeptember 30, 2023$19,673
December 31, 2023
15,600
March 31, 2024
10,801
June 30, 2024
4,827Thereafter2,912Total
$53,813If our customers choose to license cloud-based versions of our products and services rather than licensing transaction-based products and services, the associated revenue will shift from being recognized at the time of the transaction to being recognized over the subscription period or upon consumption, as applicable. Refer to Note 13 – Unearned Revenue of the Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K) for further discussion.Material Cash Requirements and Other Obligations
Contractual ObligationsThe following table summarizes the payments due by fiscal year for our outstanding contractual obligations as of June 30, 2023:(In millions)2024Thereafter
Total
Long-term debt: (a)
Principal payments
$5,250$47,616$52,866Interest payments1,379
19,746
21,125Construction commitments (b)12,237
1,218
13,455Operating and finance leases, including imputed interest (c)5,988
73,852
79,840Purchase commitments (d)64,703
3,115
67,818Total
$89,557$145,547$235,104(a) Refer to Note 11 – Debt of the Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K).
(b) Refer to Note 7 – Property and Equipment of the Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K).
(c) Refer to Note 14 – Leases of the Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K).
(d) Purchase commitments primarily relate to datacenters and include open purchase orders and take-or-pay contracts that are not presented as construction commitments above.51
PART II
Item 7Income TaxesAs a result of the TCJA, we are required to pay a one-time transition tax on deferred foreign income not previously subject to U.S. income tax. Under the TCJA, the transition tax is payable in interest-free installments over eight years, with 8% due in each of the first five years, 15% in year six, 20% in year seven, and 25% in year eight. We have paid transition tax of $7.7 billion, which included $1.5 billion for fiscal year 2023. The remaining transition tax of $10.5 billion is payable over the next three years, with $2.7 billion payable within 12 months.
In fiscal year 2023, we paid cash tax of $4.8 billion due to the mandatory capitalization for tax purposes of research and development expenditures enacted by the TCJA and effective on July 1, 2022.Share RepurchasesDuring fiscal years 2023 and 2022, we repurchased 69 million shares and 95 million shares of our common stock for $18.4 billion and $28.0 billion, respectively, through our share repurchase programs. All repurchases were made using cash resources. As of June 30, 2023, $22.3 billion remained of our $60 billion share repurchase program. Refer to Note 16 – Stockholders’ Equity of the Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K) for further discussion.DividendsDuring fiscal year 2023 and 2022, our Board of Directors declared quarterly dividends of $0.68 per share and $0.62 per share, totaling $20.2 billion and $18.6 billion, respectively. We intend to continue returning capital to shareholders in the form of dividends, subject to declaration by our Board of Directors. Refer to Note 16 – Stockholders’ Equity of the Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K) for further discussion.Other Planned Uses of CapitalOn January 18, 2022, we entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Activision Blizzard, Inc. (“Activision Blizzard”) for $95.00 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at $68.7 billion, inclusive of Activision Blizzard’s net cash. The acquisition has been approved by Activision Blizzard’s shareholders. We continue to work toward closing the transaction subject to obtaining required regulatory approvals and satisfaction of other customary closing conditions. Microsoft and Activision Blizzard have jointly agreed to extend the merger agreement through October 18, 2023 to allow for additional time to resolve remaining regulatory concerns.
We will continue to invest in sales, marketing, product support infrastructure, and existing and advanced areas of technology, as well as acquisitions that align with our business strategy. Additions to property and equipment will continue, including new facilities, datacenters, and computer systems for research and development, sales and marketing, support, and administrative staff. We expect capital expenditures to increase in coming years to support growth in our cloud offerings and our investments in AI infrastructure. We have operating and finance leases for datacenters, corporate offices, research and development facilities, Microsoft Experience Centers, and certain equipment. We have not engaged in any related party transactions or arrangements with unconsolidated entities or other persons that are reasonably likely to materially affect liquidity or the availability of capital resources.
CRITICAL ACCOUNTING ESTIMATES
Our consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes are prepared in accordance with GAAP. Preparing consolidated financial statements requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities, revenue, and expenses. Critical accounting estimates are those estimates that involve a significant level of estimation uncertainty and could have a material impact on our financial condition or results of operations. We have critical accounting estimates in the areas of revenue recognition, impairment of investment securities, goodwill, research and development costs, legal and other contingencies, income taxes, and inventories.
52PART II
Item 7Revenue Recognition
Our contracts with customers often include promises to transfer multiple products and services to a customer. Determining whether products and services are considered distinct performance obligations that should be accounted for separately versus together may require significant judgment. When a cloud-based service includes both on-premises software licenses and cloud services, judgment is required to determine whether the software license is considered distinct and accounted for separately, or not distinct and accounted for together with the cloud service and recognized over time. Certain cloud services, primarily Office 365, depend on a significant level of integration, interdependency, and interrelation between the desktop applications and cloud services, and are accounted for together as one performance obligation. Revenue from Office 365 is recognized ratably over the period in which the cloud services are provided.Judgment is required to determine the stand-alone selling price (“SSP") for each distinct performance obligation. We use a single amount to estimate SSP for items that are not sold separately, including on-premises licenses sold with SA or software updates provided at no additional charge. We use a range of amounts to estimate SSP when we sell each of the products and services separately and need to determine whether there is a discount to be allocated based on the relative SSP of the various products and services.In instances where SSP is not directly observable, such as when we do not sell the product or service separately, we determine the SSP using information that may include market conditions and other observable inputs. We typically have more than one SSP for individual products and services due to the stratification of those products and services by customers and circumstances. In these instances, we may use information such as the size of the customer and geographic region in determining the SSP.
Due to the various benefits from and the nature of our SA program, judgment is required to assess the pattern of delivery, including the exercise pattern of certain benefits across our portfolio of customers.
Our products are generally sold with a right of return, we may provide other credits or incentives, and in certain instances we estimate customer usage of our products and services, which are accounted for as variable consideration when determining the amount of revenue to recognize. Returns and credits are estimated at contract inception and updated at the end of each reporting period if additional information becomes available. Changes to our estimated variable consideration were not material for the periods presented.
Impairment of Investment Securities
We review debt investments quarterly for credit losses and impairment. If the cost of an investment exceeds its fair value, we evaluate, among other factors, general market conditions, credit quality of debt instrument issuers, and the extent to which the fair value is less than cost. This determination requires significant judgment. In making this judgment, we employ a systematic methodology that considers available quantitative and qualitative evidence in evaluating potential impairment of our investments. In addition, we consider specific adverse conditions related to the financial health of, and business outlook for, the investee. If we have plans to sell the security or it is more likely than not that we will be required to sell the security before recovery, then a decline in fair value below cost is recorded as an impairment charge in other income (expense), net and a new cost basis in the investment is established. If market, industry, and/or investee conditions deteriorate, we may incur future impairments.Equity investments without readily determinable fair values are written down to fair value if a qualitative assessment indicates that the investment is impaired and the fair value of the investment is less than carrying value. We perform a qualitative assessment on a periodic basis. We are required to estimate the fair value of the investment to determine the amount of the impairment loss. Once an investment is determined to be impaired, an impairment charge is recorded in other income (expense), net.
53PART II
Item 7Goodwill
We allocate goodwill to reporting units based on the reporting unit expected to benefit from the business combination. We evaluate our reporting units on an annual basis and, if necessary, reassign goodwill using a relative fair value allocation approach. Goodwill is tested for impairment at the reporting unit level (operating segment or one level below an operating segment) on an annual basis (May 1) and between annual tests if an event occurs or circumstances change that would more likely than not reduce the fair value of a reporting unit below its carrying value. These events or circumstances could include a significant change in the business climate, legal factors, operating performance indicators, competition, or sale or disposition of a significant portion of a reporting unit.
Application of the goodwill impairment test requires judgment, including the identification of reporting units, assignment of assets and liabilities to reporting units, assignment of goodwill to reporting units, and determination of the fair value of each reporting unit. The fair value of each reporting unit is estimated primarily through the use of a discounted cash flow methodology. This analysis requires significant judgments, including estimation of future cash flows, which is dependent on internal forecasts, estimation of the long-term rate of growth for our business, estimation of the useful life over which cash flows will occur, and determination of our weighted average cost of capital.
The estimates used to calculate the fair value of a reporting unit change from year to year based on operating results, market conditions, and other factors. Changes in these estimates and assumptions could materially affect the determination of fair value and goodwill impairment for each reporting unit.
Research and Development Costs
Costs incurred internally in researching and developing a computer software product are charged to expense until technological feasibility has been established for the product. Once technological feasibility is established, software costs are capitalized until the product is available for general release to customers. Judgment is required in determining when technological feasibility of a product is established. We have determined that technological feasibility for our software products is reached after all high-risk development issues have been resolved through coding and testing. Generally, this occurs shortly before the products are released to production. The amortization of these costs is included in cost of revenue over the estimated life of the products.
Legal and Other Contingencies
The outcomes of legal proceedings and claims brought against us are subject to significant uncertainty. An estimated loss from a loss contingency such as a legal proceeding or claim is accrued by a charge to income if it is probable that an asset has been impaired or a liability has been incurred and the amount of the loss can be reasonably estimated. In determining whether a loss should be accrued we evaluate, among other factors, the degree of probability of an unfavorable outcome and the ability to make a reasonable estimate of the amount of loss. Changes in these factors could materially impact our consolidated financial statements.54PART II
Item 7
Income Taxes
The objectives of accounting for income taxes are to recognize the amount of taxes payable or refundable for the current year, and deferred tax liabilities and assets for the future tax consequences of events that have been recognized in an entity’s financial statements or tax returns. We recognize the tax benefit from an uncertain tax position only if it is more likely than not that the tax position will be sustained on examination by the taxing authorities, based on the technical merits of the position. The tax benefits recognized in the financial statements from such a position are measured based on the largest benefit that has a greater than 50% likelihood of being realized upon ultimate settlement. Accounting literature also provides guidance on derecognition of income tax assets and liabilities, classification of deferred income tax assets and liabilities, accounting for interest and penalties associated with tax positions, and income tax disclosures. Judgment is required in assessing the future tax consequences of events that have been recognized in our consolidated financial statements or tax returns. Variations in the actual outcome of these future tax consequences could materially impact our consolidated financial statements.Inventories
Inventories are stated at average cost, subject to the lower of cost or net realizable value. Cost includes materials, labor, and manufacturing overhead related to the purchase and production of inventories. Net realizable value is the estimated selling price less estimated costs of completion, disposal, and transportation. We regularly review inventory quantities on hand, future purchase commitments with our suppliers, and the estimated utility of our inventory. These reviews include analysis of demand forecasts, product life cycle status, product development plans, current sales levels, pricing strategy, and component cost trends. If our review indicates a reduction in utility below carrying value, we reduce our inventory to a new cost basis through a charge to cost of revenue.
55PART II
Item 7
STATEMENT OF MANAGEMENT’S RESPONSIBILITY FOR FINANCIAL STATEMENTS
Management is responsible for the preparation of the consolidated financial statements and related information that are presented in this report. The consolidated financial statements, which include amounts based on management’s estimates and judgments, have been prepared in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America.
The Company designs and maintains accounting and internal control systems to provide reasonable assurance at reasonable cost that assets are safeguarded against loss from unauthorized use or disposition, and that the financial records are reliable for preparing consolidated financial statements and maintaining accountability for assets. These systems are augmented by written policies, an organizational structure providing division of responsibilities, careful selection and training of qualified personnel, and a program of internal audits.
The Company engaged Deloitte & Touche LLP, an independent registered public accounting firm, to audit and render an opinion on the consolidated financial statements and internal control over financial reporting in accordance with the standards of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States).
The Board of Directors, through its Audit Committee, consisting solely of independent directors of the Company, meets periodically with management, internal auditors, and our independent registered public accounting firm to ensure that each is meeting its responsibilities and to discuss matters concerning internal controls and financial reporting. Deloitte & Touche LLP and the internal auditors each have full and free access to the Audit Committee.
Satya Nadella
Chief Executive Officer
Amy E. Hood
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Alice L. Jolla
Corporate Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer56PART II
FY 2024-06-30 (later)
Item 7
ITEM 7. MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONSThe following Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations (“MD&A”) is intended to help the reader understand the results of operations and financial condition of Microsoft Corporation. MD&A is provided as a supplement to, and should be read in conjunction with, our consolidated financial statements and the accompanying Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K). This section generally discusses the results of our operations for the year ended June 30, 2024 compared to the year ended June 30, 2023. For a discussion of the year ended June 30, 2023 compared to the year ended June 30, 2022, please refer to Part II, Item 7, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended June 30, 2023.OVERVIEWMicrosoft is a technology company committed to making digital technology and artificial intelligence (“AI”) available broadly and doing so responsibly, with a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. We create platforms and tools, powered by AI, that deliver innovative solutions that meet the evolving needs of our customers.We generate revenue by offering a wide range of cloud-based solutions, content, and other services to people and businesses; licensing and supporting an array of software products; delivering relevant online advertising to a global audience; and designing and selling devices. Our most significant expenses are related to compensating employees; supporting and investing in our cloud-based services, including datacenter operations; designing, manufacturing, marketing, and selling our other products and services; and income taxes.Highlights from fiscal year 2024 compared with fiscal year 2023 included:
• Microsoft Cloud revenue increased 23% to $137.4 billion.
• Office Commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 14% driven by Office 365 Commercial growth of 16%.
• Office Consumer products and cloud services revenue increased 4% and Microsoft 365 Consumer subscribers grew to 82.5 million.
• LinkedIn revenue increased 9%.
• Dynamics products and cloud services revenue increased 19% driven by Dynamics 365 growth of 24%.
• Server products and cloud services revenue increased 22% driven by Azure and other cloud services growth of 30%.
• Windows revenue increased 8% with Windows original equipment manufacturer licensing (“Windows OEM”) revenue growth of 7% and Windows Commercial products and cloud services revenue growth of 11%.
• Devices revenue decreased 15%.
• Xbox content and services revenue increased 50% driven by 44 points of net impact from the Activision Blizzard Inc. (“Activision Blizzard”) acquisition. The net impact reflects the change of Activision Blizzard content from third-party to first-party.
• Search and news advertising revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs increased 12%.
On October 13, 2023, we completed our acquisition of Activision Blizzard for a total purchase price of $75.4 billion, consisting primarily of cash. The financial results of Activision Blizzard have been included in our consolidated financial statements since the date of the acquisition. Activision Blizzard is reported as part of our More Personal Computing segment. Refer to Note 8 – Business Combinations of the Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K) for further discussion.
39PART II
Item 7Industry Trends
Our industry is dynamic and highly competitive, with frequent changes in both technologies and business models. Each industry shift is an opportunity to conceive new products, new technologies, or new ideas that can further transform the industry and our business. At Microsoft, we push the boundaries of what is possible through a broad range of research and development activities that seek to identify and address the changing demands of customers and users, industry trends, and competitive forces.Economic Conditions, Challenges, and Risks
The markets for software, devices, and cloud-based services are dynamic and highly competitive. Our competitors are developing new software and devices, while also deploying competing cloud-based services for consumers and businesses. The devices and form factors customers prefer evolve rapidly, influencing how users access services in the cloud and, in some cases, the user’s choice of which suite of cloud-based services to use. Aggregate demand for our software, services, and devices is also correlated to global macroeconomic and geopolitical factors, which remain dynamic. We must continue to evolve and adapt over an extended time in pace with this changing environment.
The investments we are making in cloud and AI infrastructure and devices will continue to increase our operating costs and may decrease our operating margins. We continue to identify and evaluate opportunities to expand our datacenter locations and increase our server capacity to meet the evolving needs of our customers, particularly given the growing demand for AI services. Our datacenters depend on the availability of permitted and buildable land, predictable energy, networking supplies, and servers, including graphics processing units (“GPUs”) and other components. Our devices are primarily manufactured by third-party contract manufacturers. For the majority of our products, we have the ability to use other manufacturers if a current vendor becomes unavailable or unable to meet our requirements. However, some of our products contain certain components for which there are very few qualified suppliers. Extended disruptions at these suppliers could impact our ability to manufacture devices on time to meet consumer demand.
Our success is highly dependent on our ability to attract and retain qualified employees. We hire a mix of university and industry talent worldwide. We compete for talented individuals globally by offering an exceptional working environment, broad customer reach, scale in resources, the ability to grow one’s career across many different products and businesses, and competitive compensation and benefits.Our international operations provide a significant portion of our total revenue and expenses. Many of these revenue and expenses are denominated in currencies other than the U.S. dollar. As a result, changes in foreign exchange rates may significantly affect revenue and expenses. Fluctuations in the U.S. dollar relative to certain foreign currencies did not have a material impact on reported revenue and expenses from our international operations in fiscal year 2024.Refer to Risk Factors (Part I, Item 1A of this Form 10-K) for a discussion of these factors and other risks.
SeasonalityOur revenue fluctuates quarterly and is generally higher in the fourth quarter of our fiscal year. Fourth quarter revenue is driven by a higher volume of multi-year contracts executed during the period.Change in Accounting EstimateIn July 2022, we completed an assessment of the useful lives of our server and network equipment. Due to investments in software that increased efficiencies in how we operate our server and network equipment, as well as advances in technology, we determined we should increase the estimated useful lives of both server and network equipment from four years to six years. This change in accounting estimate was effective beginning fiscal year 2023.
40PART II
Item 7
Reportable SegmentsWe report our financial performance based on the following segments: Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing. The segment amounts included in MD&A are presented on a basis consistent with our internal management reporting.Additional information on our reportable segments is contained in Note 19 – Segment Information and Geographic Data of the Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K).
Metrics
We use metrics in assessing the performance of our business and to make informed decisions regarding the allocation of resources. We disclose metrics to enable investors to evaluate progress against our ambitions, provide transparency into performance trends, and reflect the continued evolution of our products and services. Our commercial and other business metrics are fundamentally connected based on how customers use our products and services. The metrics are disclosed in the MD&A or the Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K). Financial metrics are calculated based on financial results prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America (“GAAP”), and growth comparisons relate to the corresponding period of last fiscal year.In the first quarter of fiscal year 2024, we made updates to the presentation and method of calculation for certain metrics, revising our Microsoft Cloud revenue metric to include revenue growth and expanding our Microsoft 365 Consumer subscribers metric to include Microsoft 365 Basic subscribers, aligning with how we manage our business.CommercialOur commercial business primarily consists of Server products and cloud services, Office Commercial, Windows Commercial, the commercial portion of LinkedIn, Enterprise and partner services, and Dynamics. Our commercial metrics allow management and investors to assess the overall health of our commercial business and include leading indicators of future performance.Commercial remaining performance obligation
Commercial portion of revenue allocated to remaining performance obligations, which includes unearned revenue and amounts that will be invoiced and recognized as revenue in future periodsMicrosoft Cloud revenue and revenue growthRevenue from Azure and other cloud services, Office 365 Commercial, the commercial portion of LinkedIn, Dynamics 365, and other commercial cloud properties
Microsoft Cloud gross margin percentage
Gross margin percentage for our Microsoft Cloud business41PART II
Item 7
Productivity and Business Processes and Intelligent Cloud
Metrics related to our Productivity and Business Processes and Intelligent Cloud segments assess the health of our core businesses within these segments. The metrics reflect our cloud and on-premises product strategies and trends.
Office Commercial products and cloud services revenue growthRevenue from Office Commercial products and cloud services (Office 365 subscriptions, the Office 365 portion of Microsoft 365 Commercial subscriptions, and Office licensed on-premises), comprising Office, Exchange, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Office 365 Security and Compliance, Microsoft Viva, and Copilot for Microsoft 365Office Consumer products and cloud services revenue growthRevenue from Office Consumer products and cloud services, including Microsoft 365 Consumer and Copilot Pro subscriptions, Office licensed on-premises, and other Office servicesOffice 365 Commercial seat growth
The number of Office 365 Commercial seats at end of period where seats are paid users covered by an Office 365 Commercial subscription
Microsoft 365 Consumer subscribersThe number of Microsoft 365 Consumer and Copilot Pro subscribers at end of periodDynamics products and cloud services revenue growthRevenue from Dynamics products and cloud services, including Dynamics 365, comprising a set of intelligent, cloud-based applications across ERP, CRM, Power Apps, and Power Automate; and on-premises ERP and CRM applicationsLinkedIn revenue growth
Revenue from LinkedIn, including Talent Solutions, Marketing Solutions, Premium Subscriptions, and Sales Solutions
Server products and cloud services revenue growth
Revenue from Server products and cloud services, including Azure and other cloud services; SQL Server, Windows Server, Visual Studio, System Center, and related Client Access Licenses (“CALs”); and Nuance and GitHub
More Personal Computing
Metrics related to our More Personal Computing segment assess the performance of key lines of business within this segment. These metrics provide strategic product insights which allow us to assess the performance across our commercial and consumer businesses. As we have diversity of target audiences and sales motions within the Windows business, we monitor metrics that are reflective of those varying motions.
Windows OEM revenue growth
Revenue from sales of Windows Pro and non-Pro licenses sold through the OEM channel
Windows Commercial products and cloud services revenue growth
Revenue from Windows Commercial products and cloud services, comprising volume licensing of the Windows operating system, Windows cloud services, and other Windows commercial offerings
Devices revenue growth
Revenue from Devices, including Surface, HoloLens, and PC accessories
Xbox content and services revenue growthRevenue from Xbox content and services, comprising first-party content (such as Activision Blizzard) and third-party content, including games and in-game content; Xbox Game Pass and other subscriptions; Xbox Cloud Gaming; advertising; third-party disc royalties; and other cloud servicesSearch and news advertising revenue (ex TAC) growth
Revenue from search and news advertising excluding traffic acquisition costs (“TAC”) paid to Bing Ads network publishers and news partners42PART II
Item 7
SUMMARY RESULTS OF OPERATIONS
(In millions, except percentages and per share amounts)20242023Percentage Change
Revenue
$245,122$211,915
16%Gross margin171,008146,05217%Operating income109,43388,52324%Net income88,13672,36122%Diluted earnings per share11.809.6822%Adjusted gross margin (non-GAAP)171,008146,20417%Adjusted operating income (non-GAAP)109,43389,69422%Adjusted net income (non-GAAP)88,13673,30720%Adjusted diluted earnings per share (non-GAAP)11.809.8120%
Adjusted gross margin, operating income, net income, and diluted earnings per share (“EPS”) are non-GAAP financial measures. Prior year non-GAAP financial measures exclude the impact of a $1.2 billion charge in the second quarter of fiscal year 2023 (“Q2 charge”), which included employee severance expenses, impairment charges resulting from changes to our hardware portfolio, and costs related to lease consolidation activities. Refer to the Non-GAAP Financial Measures section below for a reconciliation of our financial results reported in accordance with GAAP to non-GAAP financial results.
Fiscal Year 2024 Compared with Fiscal Year 2023
Revenue increased $33.2 billion or 16% driven by growth across each of our segments. Intelligent Cloud revenue increased driven by Azure. Productivity and Business Processes revenue increased driven by Office 365 Commercial. More Personal Computing revenue increased driven by Gaming.
Cost of revenue increased $8.3 billion or 13% driven by growth in Microsoft Cloud and Gaming, offset in part by a decline in Devices.
Gross margin increased $25.0 billion or 17% driven by growth across each of our segments.
• Gross margin percentage increased slightly. Excluding the impact of the change in accounting estimate for the useful lives of our server and network equipment, gross margin percentage increased 2 points driven by improvement in More Personal Computing.
• Microsoft Cloud gross margin percentage decreased slightly to 71%. Excluding the impact of the change in accounting estimate, Microsoft Cloud gross margin percentage increased slightly driven by improvements in Azure and Office 365 Commercial, inclusive of scaling our AI infrastructure, offset in part by sales mix shift to Azure.
Operating expenses increased $4.0 billion or 7% driven by Gaming, with 7 points of growth from the Activision Blizzard acquisition, and investments in cloud engineering, offset in part by the prior year Q2 charge.
Operating income increased $20.9 billion or 24% driven by growth across each of our segments.
Prior year gross margin, operating income, net income, and diluted EPS were negatively impacted by the Q2 charge, which resulted in decreases of $152 million, $1.2 billion, $946 million, and $0.13, respectively.
43PART II
Item 7
SEGMENT RESULTS OF OPERATIONS
(In millions, except percentages)20242023Percentage Change
Revenue
Productivity and Business Processes
$77,728$69,274
12%Intelligent Cloud105,36287,90720%More Personal Computing62,03254,73413%Total
$245,122$211,915
16%Operating Income
Productivity and Business Processes
$40,540$34,189
19%Intelligent Cloud49,58437,88431%More Personal Computing19,30916,45017%Total
$109,433$88,523
24%Reportable SegmentsFiscal Year 2024 Compared with Fiscal Year 2023Productivity and Business ProcessesRevenue increased $8.5 billion or 12%.
• Office Commercial products and cloud services revenue increased $5.8 billion or 14%. Office 365 Commercial revenue grew 16% with seat growth of 7%, driven by small and medium business and frontline worker offerings, as well as growth in revenue per user. Office Commercial products revenue declined 16% driven by continued customer shift to cloud offerings.
• Office Consumer products and cloud services revenue increased $237 million or 4%. Microsoft 365 Consumer subscribers grew 10% to 82.5 million.
• LinkedIn revenue increased $1.4 billion or 9% driven by growth across all lines of business – Talent Solutions, Premium Subscriptions, Marketing Solutions, and Sales Solutions.
• Dynamics products and cloud services revenue increased $1.0 billion or 19% driven by Dynamics 365. Dynamics 365 revenue grew 24% driven by growth across all workloads.
Operating income increased $6.4 billion or 19%.
• Gross margin increased $6.5 billion or 12% driven by growth in Office 365 Commercial. Gross margin percentage decreased slightly. Excluding the impact of the change in accounting estimate, gross margin percentage increased slightly driven by improvement in Office 365 Commercial.
• Operating expenses increased $159 million or 1%.Intelligent CloudRevenue increased $17.5 billion or 20%.
• Server products and cloud services revenue increased $17.8 billion or 22% driven by Azure and other cloud services. Azure and other cloud services revenue grew 30% driven by growth in our consumption-based services. Server products revenue increased 3% driven by continued demand for our hybrid solutions, including Windows Server and SQL Server running in multi-cloud environments.
• Enterprise and partner services revenue decreased $306 million or 4% driven by declines in Enterprise Support Services and Industry Solutions.
44PART II
Item 7Operating income increased $11.7 billion or 31%.
• Gross margin increased $11.6 billion or 19% driven by growth in Azure. Gross margin percentage decreased slightly. Excluding the impact of the change in accounting estimate, gross margin percentage increased slightly primarily driven by improvement in Azure, inclusive of scaling our AI infrastructure, offset in part by sales mix shift to Azure.
• Operating expenses decreased slightly primarily driven by the prior year Q2 charge, offset in part by investments in Azure.More Personal ComputingRevenue increased $7.3 billion or 13%.
• Windows revenue increased $1.7 billion or 8% driven by growth in Windows Commercial and Windows OEM. Windows Commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 11% driven by demand for Microsoft 365. Windows OEM revenue increased 7%.
• Gaming revenue increased $6.0 billion or 39% driven by growth in Xbox content and services. Xbox content and services revenue increased 50% driven by 44 points of net impact from the Activision Blizzard acquisition. Xbox hardware revenue decreased 13% driven by lower volume of consoles sold.
• Search and news advertising revenue increased $418 million or 3%. Search and news advertising revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs increased 12% driven by higher search volume.
• Devices revenue decreased $815 million or 15%.
Operating income increased $2.9 billion or 17%.
• Gross margin increased $6.8 billion or 23% driven by growth in Gaming, with 10 points of net impact from the Activision Blizzard acquisition, as well as growth in Windows. Gross margin percentage increased driven by sales mix shift to higher margin businesses and improvement in Devices.
• Operating expenses increased $3.9 billion or 31% driven by Gaming, with 34 points of growth from the Activision Blizzard acquisition.OPERATING EXPENSES
Research and Development
(In millions, except percentages)20242023Percentage Change
Research and development
$29,510$27,195
9%As a percent of revenue12%13%
(1)pptResearch and development expenses include payroll, employee benefits, stock-based compensation expense, and other headcount-related expenses associated with product development. Research and development expenses also include third-party development and programming costs and the amortization of purchased software code and services content.Fiscal Year 2024 Compared with Fiscal Year 2023
Research and development expenses increased $2.3 billion or 9% driven by Gaming, with 7 points of growth from the Activision Blizzard acquisition, and investments in cloud engineering.Sales and Marketing
(In millions, except percentages)20242023Percentage Change
Sales and marketing
$24,456$22,759
7%As a percent of revenue10%11%(1)ppt
45
PART II
Item 7Sales and marketing expenses include payroll, employee benefits, stock-based compensation expense, and other headcount-related expenses associated with sales and marketing personnel, and the costs of advertising, promotions, trade shows, seminars, and other programs.Fiscal Year 2024 Compared with Fiscal Year 2023
Sales and marketing expenses increased $1.7 billion or 7% driven by Gaming, with 6 points of growth from the Activision Blizzard acquisition.General and Administrative
(In millions, except percentages)20242023Percentage Change
General and administrative
$7,609$7,575
0%As a percent of revenue3%4%
(1)pptGeneral and administrative expenses include payroll, employee benefits, stock-based compensation expense, employee severance expense incurred as part of a corporate program, and other headcount-related expenses associated with finance, legal, facilities, certain human resources and other administrative personnel, certain taxes, and legal and other administrative fees.Fiscal Year 2024 Compared with Fiscal Year 2023
General and administrative expenses increased slightly as growth from the Activision Blizzard acquisition was offset in part by the prior year Q2 charge.OTHER INCOME (EXPENSE), NET
The components of other income (expense), net were as follows:
(In millions)
Year Ended June 30,20242023Interest and dividends income
$3,157$2,994Interest expense(2,935
)(1,968
)Net recognized gains (losses) on investments
(118)260Net losses on derivatives(187
)(456
)Net gains (losses) on foreign currency remeasurements(244)181Other, net(1,319
)(223
)Total
$(1,646
)$788
We use derivative instruments to manage risks related to foreign currencies, interest rates, equity prices, and credit; to enhance investment returns; and to facilitate portfolio diversification. Gains and losses from changes in fair values of derivatives that are not designated as hedging instruments are primarily recognized in other income (expense), net.
Fiscal Year 2024 Compared with Fiscal Year 2023
Interest and dividends income increased due to higher yields. Interest expense increased due to the issuance of commercial paper. Net recognized losses on investments increased primarily due to higher equity impairments and lower gains on equity investments. Net losses on derivatives decreased primarily due to lower losses on equity derivatives. Other, net primarily reflects net recognized losses on equity method investments.
46
PART II
Item 7INCOME TAXES
Effective Tax RateOur effective tax rate for fiscal years 2024 and 2023 was 18% and 19%, respectively. The decrease in our effective tax rate was primarily due to tax benefits from tax law changes, including the impact from the issuance of Notice 2023-55 and Notice 2023-80 by the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) and U.S. Treasury Department. Notice 2023-55, issued in the first quarter of fiscal year 2024, delayed the effective date of final foreign tax credit regulations to fiscal year 2024 for Microsoft. Notice 2023-80, issued in the second quarter of fiscal year 2024, further delayed the effective date of final foreign tax credit regulations indefinitely.Our effective tax rate was lower than the U.S. federal statutory rate, primarily due to earnings taxed at lower rates in foreign jurisdictions resulting from producing and distributing our products and services through our foreign regional operations center in Ireland.The mix of income before income taxes between the U.S. and foreign countries impacted our effective tax rate as a result of the geographic distribution of, and customer demand for, our products and services. In fiscal year 2024, our U.S. income before income taxes was $62.9 billion and our foreign income before income taxes was $44.9 billion. In fiscal year 2023, our U.S. income before income taxes was $52.9 billion and our foreign income before income taxes was $36.4 billion.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (“OECD”) published its model rules “Tax Challenges Arising From the Digitalisation of the Economy - Global Anti-Base Erosion Model Rules (Pillar Two)” which established a global minimum corporate tax rate of 15% for certain multinational enterprises. Many countries have implemented or are in the process of implementing the Pillar Two legislation, which will apply to Microsoft beginning in fiscal year 2025. While we do not currently estimate a material impact to our consolidated financial statements, we continue to monitor the impact as countries implement legislation and the OECD provides additional guidance.Uncertain Tax PositionsWe remain under audit by the IRS for tax years 2014 to 2017. With respect to the audit for tax years 2004 to 2013, on September 26, 2023, we received Notices of Proposed Adjustment (“NOPAs”) from the IRS. The primary issues in the NOPAs relate to intercompany transfer pricing. In the NOPAs, the IRS is seeking an additional tax payment of $28.9 billion plus penalties and interest. As of June 30, 2024, we believe our allowances for income tax contingencies are adequate. We disagree with the proposed adjustments and will vigorously contest the NOPAs through the IRS’s administrative appeals office and, if necessary, judicial proceedings. We do not expect a final resolution of these issues in the next 12 months. Based on the information currently available, we do not anticipate a significant increase or decrease to our income tax contingencies for these issues within the next 12 months.
We are subject to income tax in many jurisdictions outside the U.S. Our operations in certain jurisdictions remain subject to examination for tax years 1996 to 2023, some of which are currently under audit by local tax authorities. The resolution of each of these audits is not expected to be material to our consolidated financial statements.
NON-GAAP FINANCIAL MEASURES
Adjusted gross margin, operating income, net income, and diluted EPS are non-GAAP financial measures. Prior year non-GAAP financial measures exclude the impact of the Q2 charge, which includes employee severance expenses, impairment charges resulting from changes to our hardware portfolio, and costs related to lease consolidation activities. We believe these non-GAAP measures aid 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. These non-GAAP financial measures presented should not be considered a substitute for, or superior to, the measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP.
47PART II
Item 7The following table reconciles our financial results reported in accordance with GAAP to non-GAAP financial results:
(In millions, except percentages and per share amounts)20242023Percentage Change
Gross margin
$171,008$146,052
17%Severance, hardware-related impairment, and lease consolidation costs0152*
Adjusted gross margin (non-GAAP)
$171,008$146,204
17%Operating income
$109,433$88,523
24%Severance, hardware-related impairment, and lease consolidation costs01,171*
Adjusted operating income (non-GAAP)
$109,433$89,694
22%Net income
$88,136$72,361
22%Severance, hardware-related impairment, and lease consolidation costs0946*Adjusted net income (non-GAAP)
$88,136$73,307
20%Diluted earnings per share
$11.80$9.68
22%Severance, hardware-related impairment, and lease consolidation costs00.13*Adjusted diluted earnings per share (non-GAAP)
$11.80$9.81
20%* Not meaningful.LIQUIDITY AND CAPITAL RESOURCES
We expect existing cash, cash equivalents, short-term investments, cash flows from operations, and access to capital markets to continue to be sufficient to fund our operating activities and cash commitments for investing and financing activities, such as dividends, share repurchases, debt maturities, material capital expenditures, and the transition tax related to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (“TCJA”), for at least the next 12 months and thereafter for the foreseeable future.
Cash, Cash Equivalents, and InvestmentsCash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments totaled $75.5 billion and $111.3 billion as of June 30, 2024 and 2023, respectively. Equity and other investments were $14.6 billion and $9.9 billion as of June 30, 2024 and 2023, respectively. Our short-term investments are primarily intended to facilitate liquidity and capital preservation. They consist predominantly of highly liquid investment-grade fixed-income securities, diversified among industries and individual issuers. The investments are predominantly U.S. dollar-denominated securities, but also include foreign currency-denominated securities to diversify risk. Our fixed-income investments are exposed to interest rate risk and credit risk. The credit risk and average maturity of our fixed-income portfolio are managed to achieve economic returns that correlate to certain fixed-income indices. The settlement risk related to these investments is insignificant given that the short-term investments held are primarily highly liquid investment-grade fixed-income securities.Valuation
In general, and where applicable, we use quoted prices in active markets for identical assets or liabilities to determine the fair value of our financial instruments. This pricing methodology applies to our Level 1 investments, such as U.S. government securities, common and preferred stock, and mutual funds. If quoted prices in active markets for identical assets or liabilities are not available to determine fair value, then we use quoted prices for similar assets and liabilities or inputs other than the quoted prices that are observable either directly or indirectly. This pricing methodology applies to our Level 2 investments, such as commercial paper, certificates of deposit, U.S. agency securities, foreign government bonds, mortgage- and asset-backed securities, corporate notes and bonds, and municipal securities. Level 3 investments are valued using internally-developed models with unobservable inputs. Assets and liabilities measured at fair value on a recurring basis using unobservable inputs are an immaterial portion of our portfolio.48PART II
Item 7A majority of our investments are priced by pricing vendors and are generally Level 1 or Level 2 investments as these vendors either provide a quoted market price in an active market or use observable inputs for their pricing without applying significant adjustments. Broker pricing is used mainly when a quoted price is not available, the investment is not priced by our pricing vendors, or when a broker price is more reflective of fair values in the market in which the investment trades. Our broker-priced investments are generally classified as Level 2 investments because the broker prices these investments based on similar assets without applying significant adjustments. In addition, all our broker-priced investments have a sufficient level of trading volume to demonstrate that the fair values used are appropriate for these investments. Our fair value processes include controls that are designed to ensure appropriate fair values are recorded. These controls include model validation, review of key model inputs, analysis of period-over-period fluctuations, and independent recalculation of prices where appropriate.
Cash Flows
Cash from operations increased $31.0 billion to $118.5 billion for fiscal year 2024, primarily due to an increase in cash received from customers. Cash used in financing decreased $6.2 billion to $37.8 billion for fiscal year 2024, primarily due to a $5.0 billion decrease in common stock repurchases and a $3.3 billion increase in proceeds from issuance of debt, net of repayments, offset in part by a $2.0 billion increase in dividends paid. Cash used in investing increased $74.3 billion to $97.0 billion for fiscal year 2024, primarily due to a $67.5 billion increase in cash used for acquisitions of companies, net of cash acquired, and purchases of intangible and other assets and a $16.4 billion increase in additions to property and equipment.Debt ProceedsWe issue debt to take advantage of favorable pricing and liquidity in the debt markets, reflecting our credit rating. The proceeds of these issuances were or will be used for general corporate purposes, which may include, among other things, funding for working capital, capital expenditures, repurchases of capital stock, acquisitions, and repayment of existing debt. Refer to Note 11 – Debt of the Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K) for further discussion.Unearned Revenue
Unearned revenue comprises mainly unearned revenue related to volume licensing programs, which may include Software Assurance (“SA”) and cloud services. Unearned revenue is generally invoiced annually at the beginning of each contract period for multi-year agreements and recognized ratably over the coverage period. Unearned revenue also includes payments for other offerings for which we have been paid in advance and earn the revenue when we transfer control of the product or service. Refer to Note 1 – Accounting Policies of the Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K) for further discussion.The following table outlines the expected future recognition of unearned revenue as of June 30, 2024:(In millions)
Three Months EndingSeptember 30, 2024$22,529
December 31, 2024
17,664
March 31, 2025
12,076
June 30, 2025
5,313Thereafter2,602Total
$60,184If our customers choose to license cloud-based versions of our products and services rather than licensing transaction-based products and services, the associated revenue will shift from being recognized at the time of the transaction to being recognized over the subscription period or upon consumption, as applicable. Refer to Note 13 – Unearned Revenue of the Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K) for further discussion.49
PART II
Item 7Material Cash Requirements and Other Obligations
Contractual ObligationsThe following table summarizes the payments due by fiscal year for our outstanding contractual obligations as of June 30, 2024:(In millions)2025Thereafter
Total
Long-term debt: (a)
Principal payments
$2,250$48,971$51,221Interest payments1,618
27,041
28,659Construction commitments (b)29,892
5,499
35,391Operating and finance leases, including imputed interest (c)12,250
160,475
172,725Purchase commitments (d)68,280
3,742
72,022Total
$114,290$245,728$360,018(a) Refer to Note 11 – Debt of the Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K).
(b) Refer to Note 7 – Property and Equipment of the Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K).
(c) Refer to Note 14 – Leases of the Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K).
(d) Purchase commitments primarily relate to datacenters and include open purchase orders and take-or-pay contracts that are not presented as construction commitments above.Income TaxesAs a result of the TCJA, we are required to pay a one-time transition tax on deferred foreign income not previously subject to U.S. income tax. Under the TCJA, the transition tax is payable in interest-free installments over eight years, with 8% due in each of the first five years, 15% in year six, 20% in year seven, and 25% in year eight. As of June 30, 2024, we had a remaining transition tax liability of $7.6 billion, of which $3.8 billion is short-term and payable in the first quarter of fiscal year 2025.Share RepurchasesDuring fiscal years 2024 and 2023, we repurchased 32 million shares and 69 million shares of our common stock for $12.0 billion and $18.4 billion, respectively, through our share repurchase program. All repurchases were made using cash resources. As of June 30, 2024, $10.3 billion remained of our $60 billion share repurchase program. Refer to Note 16 – Stockholders’ Equity of the Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K) for further discussion.DividendsDuring fiscal years 2024 and 2023, our Board of Directors declared dividends totaling $22.3 billion and $20.2 billion, respectively. We intend to continue returning capital to shareholders in the form of dividends, subject to declaration by our Board of Directors. Refer to Note 16 – Stockholders’ Equity of the Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K) for further discussion.Other Planned Uses of CapitalWe will continue to invest in sales, marketing, product support infrastructure, and existing and advanced areas of technology, as well as acquisitions that align with our business strategy. Additions to property and equipment will continue, including new facilities, datacenters, and computer systems for research and development, sales and marketing, support, and administrative staff. We expect capital expenditures to increase in coming years to support growth in our cloud offerings and our investments in AI infrastructure and training. We have operating and finance leases for datacenters, corporate offices, research and development facilities, Microsoft Experience Centers, and certain equipment. We have not engaged in any related party transactions or arrangements with unconsolidated entities or other persons that are reasonably likely to materially affect liquidity or the availability of capital resources.
50PART II
Item 7RECENT ACCOUNTING GUIDANCE
Refer to Note 1 – Accounting Policies of the Notes to Financial Statements (Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K) for further discussion.
CRITICAL ACCOUNTING ESTIMATES
Our consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes are prepared in accordance with GAAP. Preparing consolidated financial statements requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities, revenue, and expenses. Critical accounting estimates are those estimates that involve a significant level of estimation uncertainty and could have a material impact on our financial condition or results of operations. We have critical accounting estimates in the areas of revenue recognition, impairment of investment securities, goodwill, research and development costs, legal and other contingencies, income taxes, and business combinations – valuation of intangible assets.Revenue Recognition
Our contracts with customers often include promises to transfer multiple products and services to a customer. Determining whether products and services are considered distinct performance obligations that should be accounted for separately versus together may require significant judgment. When a cloud-based service includes both on-premises software licenses and cloud services, judgment is required to determine whether the software license is considered distinct and accounted for separately, or not distinct and accounted for together with the cloud service and recognized over time. Certain cloud services, primarily Office 365, depend on a significant level of integration, interdependency, and interrelation between the desktop applications and cloud services, and are accounted for together as one performance obligation. Revenue from Office 365 is recognized ratably over the period in which the cloud services are provided.Judgment is required to determine the standalone selling price (“SSP") for each distinct performance obligation. We use a single amount to estimate SSP for items that are not sold separately, including on-premises licenses sold with SA or software updates provided at no additional charge. We use a range of amounts to estimate SSP when we sell each of the products and services separately and need to determine whether there is a discount to be allocated based on the relative SSP of the various products and services.In instances where SSP is not directly observable, such as when we do not sell the product or service separately, we determine the SSP using information that may include market conditions and other observable inputs. We typically have more than one SSP for individual products and services due to the stratification of those products and services by customers and circumstances. In these instances, we may use information such as the size of the customer and geographic region in determining the SSP.
Due to the various benefits from and the nature of our SA program, judgment is required to assess the pattern of delivery, including the exercise pattern of certain benefits across our portfolio of customers.
Our products are generally sold with a right of return, we may provide other credits or incentives, and in certain instances we estimate customer usage of our products and services, which are accounted for as variable consideration when determining the amount of revenue to recognize. Returns and credits are estimated at contract inception and updated at the end of each reporting period if additional information becomes available. Changes to our estimated variable consideration were not material for the periods presented.
Impairment of Investment Securities
We review debt investments quarterly for credit losses and impairment. If the cost of an investment exceeds its fair value, we evaluate, among other factors, general market conditions, credit quality of debt instrument issuers, and the extent to which the fair value is less than cost. This determination requires significant judgment. In making this judgment, we employ a systematic methodology that considers available quantitative and qualitative evidence in evaluating potential impairment of our investments. In addition, we consider specific adverse conditions related to the financial health of, and business outlook for, the investee. If we have plans to sell the security or it is more likely than not that we will be required to sell the security before recovery, then a decline in fair value below cost is recorded as an impairment charge in other income (expense), net and a new cost basis in the investment is established. If market, industry, and/or investee conditions deteriorate, we may incur future impairments.51PART II
Item 7Equity investments without readily determinable fair values are written down to fair value if a qualitative assessment indicates that the investment is impaired and the fair value of the investment is less than carrying value. We perform a qualitative assessment on a periodic basis. We are required to estimate the fair value of the investment to determine the amount of the impairment loss. Once an investment is determined to be impaired, an impairment charge is recorded in other income (expense), net.Goodwill
We allocate goodwill to reporting units based on the reporting unit expected to benefit from the business combination. We evaluate our reporting units on an annual basis and, if necessary, reassign goodwill using a relative fair value allocation approach. Goodwill is tested for impairment at the reporting unit level (operating segment or one level below an operating segment) on an annual basis (May 1) and between annual tests if an event occurs or circumstances change that would more likely than not reduce the fair value of a reporting unit below its carrying value. These events or circumstances could include a significant change in the business climate, legal factors, operating performance indicators, competition, or sale or disposition of a significant portion of a reporting unit.
Application of the goodwill impairment test requires judgment, including the identification of reporting units, assignment of assets and liabilities to reporting units, assignment of goodwill to reporting units, and determination of the fair value of each reporting unit. The fair value of each reporting unit is estimated primarily through the use of a discounted cash flow methodology. This analysis requires significant judgments, including estimation of future cash flows, which is dependent on internal forecasts, estimation of the long-term rate of growth for our business, estimation of the useful life over which cash flows will occur, and determination of our weighted average cost of capital.
The estimates used to calculate the fair value of a reporting unit change from year to year based on operating results, market conditions, and other factors. Changes in these estimates and assumptions could materially affect the determination of fair value and goodwill impairment for each reporting unit.
Research and Development Costs
Costs incurred internally in researching and developing a computer software product are charged to expense until technological feasibility has been established for the product. Once technological feasibility is established, software costs are capitalized until the product is available for general release to customers. Judgment is required in determining when technological feasibility of a product is established. We have determined that technological feasibility for our software products is reached after all high-risk development issues have been resolved through coding and testing. Generally, this occurs shortly before the products are released to production. The amortization of these costs is included in cost of revenue over the estimated life of the products.
Legal and Other Contingencies
The outcomes of legal proceedings and claims brought against us are subject to significant uncertainty. An estimated loss from a loss contingency such as a legal proceeding or claim is accrued by a charge to income if it is probable that an asset has been impaired or a liability has been incurred and the amount of the loss can be reasonably estimated. In determining whether a loss should be accrued we evaluate, among other factors, the degree of probability of an unfavorable outcome and the ability to make a reasonable estimate of the amount of loss. Changes in these factors could materially impact our consolidated financial statements.52PART II
Item 7
Income Taxes
The objectives of accounting for income taxes are to recognize the amount of taxes payable or refundable for the current year, and deferred tax liabilities and assets for the future tax consequences of events that have been recognized in an entity’s financial statements or tax returns. We recognize the tax benefit from an uncertain tax position only if it is more likely than not that the tax position will be sustained on examination by the taxing authorities, based on the technical merits of the position. The tax benefits recognized in the financial statements from such a position are measured based on the largest benefit that has a greater than 50% likelihood of being realized upon ultimate settlement. Accounting literature also provides guidance on derecognition of income tax assets and liabilities, classification of deferred income tax assets and liabilities, accounting for interest and penalties associated with tax positions, and income tax disclosures. Judgment is required in assessing the future tax consequences of events that have been recognized in our consolidated financial statements or tax returns. Variations in the actual outcome of these future tax consequences could materially impact our consolidated financial statements.Business Combinations – Valuation of Intangible Assets
Accounting for business combinations requires significant judgments when allocating the purchase price to the estimated fair values of assets acquired and liabilities assumed at the acquisition date. Determination of fair value involves estimates and assumptions which can be complex, most notably with respect to intangible assets. Critical estimates used in the valuation of intangible assets include, but are not limited to, the amount and timing of projected cash flows, useful lives, and discount rates. While management’s estimates of fair value are based on assumptions that are believed to be reasonable, these assumptions are inherently uncertain as they pertain to forward-looking views of our business and market conditions. The judgments made in this valuation process could materially impact our consolidated financial statements.
53PART II
Item 7
STATEMENT OF MANAGEMENT’S RESPONSIBILITY FOR FINANCIAL STATEMENTS
Management is responsible for the preparation of the consolidated financial statements and related information that are presented in this report. The consolidated financial statements, which include amounts based on management’s estimates and judgments, have been prepared in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America.
The Company designs and maintains accounting and internal control systems to provide reasonable assurance at reasonable cost that assets are safeguarded against loss from unauthorized use or disposition, and that the financial records are reliable for preparing consolidated financial statements and maintaining accountability for assets. These systems are augmented by written policies, an organizational structure providing division of responsibilities, careful selection and training of qualified personnel, and a program of internal audits.
The Company engaged Deloitte & Touche LLP, an independent registered public accounting firm, to audit and render an opinion on the consolidated financial statements and internal control over financial reporting in accordance with the standards of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States).
The Board of Directors, through its Audit Committee, consisting solely of independent directors of the Company, meets periodically with management, internal auditors, and our independent registered public accounting firm to ensure that each is meeting its responsibilities and to discuss matters concerning internal controls and financial reporting. Deloitte & Touche LLP and the internal auditors each have full and free access to the Audit Committee.
Satya Nadella
Chief Executive Officer
Amy E. Hood
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Alice L. Jolla
Corporate Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer54PART II