微軟上一財季淨虧32億美元
Microsoft tumbled to a $3.2bn net loss in the latest quarter, the worst in its history, as it struggled to put the failed acquisition of Nokia’s handset business and a slump in the PC market behind it.
上一財季微軟(Microsoft)錄得32億美元淨虧損，爲公司歷史上業績最糟糕的一個財季。該公司仍難以擺脫收購諾基亞(Nokia)手機業務這一敗筆以及個人電腦(PC)市場下滑帶來的影響。
The results were also weighed down by the rise of the US dollar, which wiped out any growth in its core commercial division and ate into the gross profit margin.
微軟的業績還受到美元升值的困擾。美元升值徹底抹去了該公司核心商業部門的增長，還侵蝕了毛利率。
Microsoft still managed to top Wall Street’s downbeat revenue and earnings expectations, thanks largely to a jump in sales of its Surface tablet and Xbox games console.
不過，微軟的營收和利潤要強於華爾街悲觀的預期，這主要是因爲其Surface平板電腦和Xbox遊戲機的銷售有大幅增長。
But shares in the world’s biggest software company fell nearly 4 per cent to $45.45 in after-market trading, reversing some of their recent gains, as investors remained wary about its ability to use newer services to make up for the decline in other businesses.
但在盤後交易中，世界最大軟件公司的股價還是下跌了近4%，至每股45.45美元，抹掉了近期的部分漲幅。投資者者仍在擔心，微軟能否用新的服務彌補其他業務的下滑。
Satya Nadella, chief executive, sought to consign the red ink to the past as he claimed that Microsoft was seeing rapid growth from investments in new markets like the cloud. He also said that revenue from new services like Office 365 would make up for the more modest targets Microsoft has set for itself in the all-important mobile market.
微軟首席執行官薩蒂亞納德拉(Satya Nadella)試圖說服人們相信，該公司虧損的階段已經過去。他聲稱，微軟看到公司對“雲”等新市場的投資快速增長。他還表示，Office 365等新服務貢獻的營收，可幫助微軟在至關重要的移動市場實現其爲自身設定的較溫和目標。
“The big shift we’re making about phones is not to think about phones on a standalone basis,” Mr Nadella said on an analyst call on Tuesday.
“我們在手機領域做出的重大改變，是不從孤立的角度看待手機業務，”納德拉在週二的分析師電話會議上表示。
The latest figures were blighted by $8.4bn in one-off charges, including $7.5bn from a writedown of assets acquired from Nokia and the rest from restructuring charges. Microsoft revealed the giant writedown earlier this month when it announced 7,800 job cuts and cut back its ambitions for the smartphone business.
微軟上一財季業績受到了84億美元一次性費用的拖累，其中包括對從諾基亞收購的資產減記75億美元，其餘部分爲重組費用。本月早些時候，微軟披露了這筆巨大的減記，宣佈裁員7800人，並收斂了在智能手機業務上的抱負。
A collapse in PC sales this year has served to undermine the licensing revenue that has long been the main foundation of Microsoft business, leaving it increasingly dependent on hardware sales and a shift to commercial cloud revenues. Though growing 88 per cent in the latest quarter to top $2bn, these are still less than 10 per cent of overall sales.
長期以來，軟件許可證收入一直是微軟業務的主要基石。今年PC銷售滑坡拖累了微軟的這塊收入，導致它日益依賴硬件銷售和轉而挖掘商業雲收入。儘管商業雲收入在最近一個季度增長了88%、突破了20億美元，但它仍只佔微軟總銷售額的不到10%。
Sales of software licences to PC makers fell by 22 per cent, with both Windows and Office suffering from a decline in shipments of new machines that research firm Gartner put at 9.5 per cent in the latest quarter. The fall-off has followed a temporary jump in PC sales in 2014, which was prompted by the ending of Microsoft’s support for the Windows XP operating system. PC sales were also dented as customers waited for next week’s launch of Windows 10.
PC製造商貢獻的軟件許可證收入下降了22%，Windows和Office均受到新PC發貨量下滑衝擊。研究公司高德納(Gartner)表示，上一財季新PC發貨量減少了9.5%。2014年，PC銷售量出現過短暫上升，這是因爲微軟結束了對Windows XP操作系統的支持。另外，用戶在等待下週Windows 10發佈，這也抑制了PC的銷售量。
Overall, Microsoft’s revenues fell 5 per cent, to $22.2bn, with a net loss of $3.2bn, compared to net income of $4.6bn the year before. On the pro-forma basis on which Wall Street assesses the company, earnings per share rose to 62 cents from 56 cents a year ago, and ahead of the 58 cents most analysts had expected.
總體上，微軟營收下降了5%，至222億美元，淨虧損32億美元，上年同期則實現了46億美元淨利潤。預估每股收益從上年同期的56美分提高至62美分，高於多數分析師預測的58美分。
