Microsoft Corporation (MSFT)’s Fiscal Year 2015 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call Transcript

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Within consumer office we expect to see similar trends to Q2 and within our IP licensing business, we expect lower per unit royalties with the changing mix of devices sold by our licensees.In computing and gaming we expect the revenue to be $1.5 to $1.7 billion, this range reflects normal seasonality coming out of the holidays for Xbox and Surface businesses.

In phone hardware we expect revenue to be $1.4 to $1.5 billion, this range anticipates accelerating year-over-year growth in Lumia units driven by our affordable smartphone devices. We also expect both volumes and ASP’s of non Lumia devices to continue to decline in Q3, with this lower aggregate revenue base we expect gross margins which include non-cash amortization to be lower for the next couple of quarters.

In devices and consumer other we expect revenue to be about $2 billion reflecting continued progress in key areas like Office 365 home and personal, Xbox live and search. In our commercial business we expect our significant momentum in annuity and commercial cloud services to continue.  Within our commercial licensing segment we expect revenue to be $9.7 to $9.9 billion.  In addition to the factors that I discussed which impact our year over year comparability we anticipate a 4 point drag from FX. In commercial other we expect revenue to be $2.6 to $2.7 billion even after considering the impact of FX, growth will remain robust with expected momentum across our commercial cloud portfolio, Office 355, Azure and CRM online.  And in corporate we don’t expect any revenue impact.

As we continue to work towards the launch of Windows 10 we will share additional detailed information regarding any accounting impacts from the Windows 10 free upgrade offer and Windows as a service. I would like to reiterate our OEM royalty model which is paid upfront will remain in place.  We expect COGS to be $7.1 to $7.4 billion with variability driven by both hardware segments, we expects third-quarter operating expense to be $8.2 to $8.4 billion, we are lowering our full year guidance to $33.2 to $33.6 billion which reduces full year growth including NDS to 4 to 5%. Our Q3 plans include investment in advertising and customer facing role to continue to accelerate our momentum with commercial products such as SQL and the cloud, these investments are a direct result of our prioritization decisions made during H1.

Over the remainder of the fiscal year we expect incur an additional $200 million of restructuring expense, this results in total charges of roughly $1.4 billion which is lower than our previous guidance. Separately we still expect integration expense of a hundred million dollars per quarter for the remainder of the fiscal year. As a reminder other income and expense includes dividend and interest income, offset by interest expense and the net cost of hedging.  Given the current FX environment we expect other income and expense to be negative $100 million in Q3, we now expect our full year tax rate to be between 22% and 24%, this includes the Q2 income tax charge for an IRS audit adjustment as well as the changing geographic mix of our business. In Q3 we expect CAPEX to sequentially increase in support of our growing cloud business. Unearned revenue will continue to benefit from customers moving towards our subscription services and high contract renewal rates.  We expect to see low single-digit sequential decline in our unearned for Q3 which includes 1 point drag from FX as new billing will reflect the impact of the strengthening US dollar. Our commercial unearned balance will follow recent historical seasonality when adjusted for FX.

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