Following yesterday’s (Wednesday 29 April) publication of Microsoft’s third quarter 2020 results,

David Bicknell, Principal Analyst in the Thematic Research Team at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view:

“Microsoft’s good third quarter results reinforces GlobalData’s view that investing in the right themes brings success, while missing them leads to failure. Microsoft famously missed the mobile theme and suffered because of it. Now, its investments in cloud (Azure revenues were up 59% on last year) social media (LinkedIn revenues were up 21% on corresponding 2019 numbers) and the future of work – it is the dominant workplace software provider – have provided the thematic base for it to prosper. COVID-19 has had only a minimal impact on Microsoft’s revenue and it is top of the thematic screen of GlobalData’s cloud services sector scorecard.

“However, this is just one quarter and the true economic impact of COVID-19 has yet to hit most companies. If firms want to come out of COVID-19 with their business intact, then investing in the right themes is critical.”