Azure Drives MSFT's AI Strategy: Buy the Stock Before Q1 Earnings?

Microsoft’s MSFT first-quarter fiscal 2026 results, scheduled to be reported on Oct. 29, are poised to showcase the company's continued momentum in cloud computing and AI infrastructure. (Read Now: Microsoft Before Q1 Earnings: Should Investors Buy the Stock?)

The tech giant's Azure cloud platform remained the primary driver of growth expectations, with management projecting approximately 37% revenue expansion in constant currency for the quarter, positioning the Intelligent Cloud segment as the centerpiece of Microsoft's AI transformation strategy.

The Intelligent Cloud segment is expected to have remained Microsoft's primary growth engine, with revenue projections between $30.1 billion and $30.4 billion, representing growth of 25% to 26%. Our model estimate for this segment is pegged at $30.2 billion, indicating growth of 25.4% from the figure reported in the year-ago quarter.

The technology giant's strategic investments in AI infrastructure and expanding partner ecosystem are expected to have created multiple tailwinds despite facing competitive pressure in the AI space from tech giants, including Alphabet's GOOGL Google, Nvidia NVDA and Amazon AMZN.

Microsoft Corporation Price and EPS Surprise

Microsoft Corporation price-eps-surprise | Microsoft Corporation Quote

Capacity Constraints Signal Robust Demand

The company is expected to remain capacity-constrained through the first half of fiscal 2026, even as additional datacenter capacity continues coming online, underscoring the overwhelming demand for AI-enabled cloud services. This constraint reflected the massive enterprise adoption of Azure's AI capabilities, driven by the company's $368 billion contracted backlog that needed to be delivered across the breadth of Microsoft Cloud. In September, Microsoft introduced Fairwater in Wisconsin, its newest and largest AI datacenter, representing the most sophisticated AI factory the company had built, with multiple identical facilities under construction across the United States.

Infrastructure Investments Accelerate

Capital expenditures exceeded $30 billion for the fiscal first quarter, reflecting Microsoft's aggressive infrastructure buildout to meet surging AI demand. These AI datacenters represented tens of billions of dollars of investments and hundreds of thousands of cutting-edge AI chips, all engineered to power the next generation of enterprise AI workloads. The infrastructure investments directly correlated with the company's contracted revenues, providing visibility into future growth trajectories and demonstrating management's confidence in sustained demand.

Copilot Adoption Accelerates in Q1

During August, Microsoft introduced GPT-5's real-time router capability in Copilot, allowing the system to automatically select the optimal model for each prompt, enhancing response quality while optimizing costs. SharePoint agents became discoverable in the Teams app store in September, expanding the accessibility of AI-enhanced collaboration tools across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. In July, Azure AI Foundry launched the Deep Research Agent in limited public preview, enabling developers to automate complex, multi-step web research using OpenAI's advanced agentic research model, tightly integrated with Bing Search for authoritative results.

Platform Enhancements Strengthen Competitive Position

The reimagined Microsoft Marketplace launched during September, introducing a new AI apps and agents category that extended Microsoft 365 Copilot and Azure AI Foundry while expanding discoverability across a unified Microsoft storefront. These product enhancements are likely to have contributed to improved adoption metrics and supported continued average revenue per user growth through the quarter, particularly as enterprises expanded their E5 suite deployments alongside Microsoft 365 Copilot implementation.

Productivity Segment Maintains Momentum

Management guided for Productivity and Business Processes revenues between $32.2 billion and $32.5 billion, representing growth of 14% to 15%, with Microsoft 365 Commercial cloud revenues expected to grow between 13% and 14% in constant currency. The segment benefited from relatively stable business trends compared to the prior quarter, with continued expansion in average revenue per user driven by E5 suite adoption and Microsoft 365 Copilot deployment gaining traction across enterprise customers.

The convergence of robust Azure growth, accelerating Copilot adoption, massive infrastructure investments, and strategic product launches positioned Microsoft favorably heading into the fiscal first-quarter report, making the stock an attractive opportunity for investors seeking exposure to the AI revolution. MSFT currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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