Cloud: The Hidden Answer in Microsoft's Earnings

English summary

### Cloud: The Hidden Answer in Microsoft's Earnings Time: 2026-07-31 09:27:24 Content: Amazon also rose 10%+ after hours. Last night's Microsoft earnings conference call quickly explained that the capex change was due to a change in statistical caliber, not an actual reduction in spending, so it was a minor issue. But what was really instructive were three sentences. Read together, these three sentences actually answered the three questions the market cared most about over the past month: 1. Where does demand come from? 2. When will new CapEx start making money? 3. Why can future growth continue to accelerate? The three sentences in Microsoft's conference call were: First: Commercial remaining performance obligations grew 84% to $678 billion. The sequential growth in all commercial remaining performance obligations was driven by customer commitments outside frontier model companies. Second: Azure and other cloud services revenue grew 43% year over year, accelerating from the prior year. Customer demand continues to exceed available capacity.…