Microsoft said today its quarterly profit rose on strong consumer sales of Windows and raised its outlook for personal computer demand.
But the company said it had clinched fewer big corporate contracts for software than it had expected.
The world's largest software maker also raised its profit and revenue outlook for the current fiscal year, although within the range expected by Wall Street, but admitted that concerns over the security of its software had cut into new contracts in the latest quarter.
Shares in Microsoft slipped 4.7 per cent in after-hours trade to $27.54 from a Nasdaq close of $28.91.
For the fiscal first quarter ended September 30th, Microsoft reported a net profit of $2.6 billion, or 24 cents per share. That compared with a profit of $2 billion, or 19 cents per share, a year earlier, which was adjusted to reflect stock options granted at the time.
First-quarter results, as well as last year's numbers, reflected a 6 cent per share charge for stock-based compensation, as well as investment income of $763 million.
Excluding the equity compensation charge, the quarterly profit was a penny better than the average Wall Street forecast and the company's forecast.
Revenue rose just over 6 per cent to $8.2 billion from $7.75 billion a year earlier. That was above the average Wall Street forecast of near $8.1 billion, but the annual growth ranked as the slowest for Microsoft in just over three years.