Redmond Unfavorable exchange rates make the software company Microsoft more cautious. Due to currency effects of almost half a billion dollars, the Group is now calculating sales of 51.94 billion to 52.74 billion dollars in the last quarter of the current financial year (previously: 52.4 to 53.2 billion), according to a statement on Thursday.
The surplus is expected to reach $16.85 billion to $17.43 billion, after a projected $17.67 billion at best. Shares were down nearly 2 percent at the start of trading.
Microsoft did not disclose how it was doing apart from the exchange rate effects. The dollar has risen sharply due to the turnaround in the key interest rates in the US for many currencies. In the previous quarter, a strong cloud business had helped the Group to significantly increase sales and profit.
The company was able to rely on the cloud services of its Azure platform, which provides IT services and storage space on the network to many other companies and apps. But the business around the Xbox game console and hardware products such as Surface tablets also grew.
