Microsoft's quarterly sales and profit surge, beating Wall Street expectations

REDMOND, Wash. (AP) — Microsoft on Wednesday reported its quarterly sales grew 18% to $77.7 billion.

The software maker also reported a 22% increase in quarterly profit to $30.8 billion, or $4.13 per share, which beat Wall Street expectations for the July-September period. Microsoft said those results excluded the impacts of some $3 billion it invested in OpenAI during that period, in an attempt to “help clarify” how those losses affected Microsoft's core business.

Microsoft was expected to earn $3.67 per share on revenue of $75.38 billion, according to analysts surveyed by FactSet Research.

The results came a day after a new deal with OpenAI pushed Microsoft to $4 trillion in valuation for the second time this year. But shares in Microsoft then dropped in the hours before it disclose