SAN FRANCISCO
Shares of Microsoft fell sharply Wednesday after the company posted the largest quarterly loss in its history, $3.2 billion, during its fourth quarter earnings call the previous day.
Microsoft stock fell 4 percent, alongside a 6 percent drop in shares of longtime competitor Apple, which also posted quarterly earnings Tuesday.
However, Apple was met with investor caginess even though it narrowly beat analyst profit projections for the quarter.
Together, the reports from the two computer legends caused a sour mood on Wall Street, with the entire Nasdaq composite index pushing down 0.7 percent.
Microsoft’s record loss is attributed to an accounting charge of $8.4 billion stemming from the company’s problematic acquisition of Nokia’s mobile device division – a charge that essentially erased all of Microsoft’s quarterly profits. The computer gian announced earlier this month that it was laying off almost 8,000 employees, most of which are involved in Microsoft’s smartphone business.
While the Washington state company was knocked down by the Nokia deal, it did see growth in Surface tablet sales, its cloud computing services and its Xbox videogame division. Microsoft is also launching the Windows 10 operating system later this month, which the company believes will be far more popular than its current option, Windows 8.1.
“We finished the fiscal year with solid progress against our strategic priorities, through strong execution and financial discipline, which is reflected in our results for the quarter and the year,” Amy Hood, Microsoft’s chief financial officer, said in a statement.
Also Wednesday, Microsoft launched a new app, Send, which essentially treats email as an instant messaging service. The app, currently available for Apple devices, removes certain aspects of email such as the subject line, in favor of allowing users to send simple messages in seconds. With Send, Microsoft is entering a crowded messaging field that already has popular options like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Slack.
