Shares of Microsoft (MSFT) slid on Thursday after the company’s revenue forecast fell short of Wall Street’s estimates and the cloud computing giant struggles to meet demand.
Shares were down nearly 6% Thursday morning, weighing on the shares of some of its Big Tech peers. The slump slashed the stock’s year-to-date gain—once as high as 24%—to just 8%.
Microsoft on Wednesday forecast revenue at its Intelligent Cloud division would grow 18% to 20% in the current quarter, below analysts’ estimates. Growth of Azure, its cloud-computing platform, is expected to come in around 31% or 32%, a deceleration from the most recent quarter and slightly slower than Wall Street expected. The disappointing forecast overshadowed the company’s fiscal first-quarter results, which broadly exceeded expectations.
Microsoft has struggled to meet surging AI demand, a difficulty executives expect to persistin the current quarter. CFO Amy Hood on the company’s earnings call expressed confidence that growth would …