At its October 28, 2026, fiscal 2027 first-quarter earnings call, Microsoft said customer demand continued to exceed available supply and some third-party capacity deliveries expected that quarter were delayed. CFO Amy Hood reported Azure revenue growth of 48% year over year. Microsoft’s earnings-call transcript records both the delay and the company’s operating figures and forecasts.
Azure revenue growth, delivery delays and deployment speed describe different parts of Microsoft’s quarter.
What Microsoft said about the delays
Hood said some third-party GPU-as-a-service contracts had been delayed to the second half of the fiscal year. She expected continued efficiency gains across Microsoft’s CPU and GPU fleet to help offset some of those contracts. For fiscal 2027’s second quarter, she forecast Azure revenue growth of 49% to 50% in constant currency. That outlook is separate from the 48% year-over-year growth Microsoft reported for the first quarter.
The capacity measures Microsoft reported
CEO Satya Nadella said Microsoft added 24 data centers across five continents during the quarter. He also reported that the time to bring new GB300 systems online, which Microsoft calls “dock-to-live” time, fell about 20% quarter over quarter in its largest regions. Nadella said those regions account for most of Microsoft’s GPU deployments.
Nadella also said throughput for Copilot workloads increased by more than 50% quarter over quarter. These are company-reported operational measures; each describes a different activity, from adding data centers to bringing systems online and processing Copilot workloads.
Quarterly spending and forecasts
Microsoft reported $45.2 billion in capital expenditures for fiscal 2027’s first quarter. About three-quarters went to short-lived assets, primarily CPUs and GPUs. Hood also reported $7.4 billion in finance-lease capex and said Microsoft recognizes a lease’s full principal value as capex when the lease begins.
For fiscal 2027’s second quarter, Hood forecast capex above $50 billion. She forecast approximately $170 billion in capex for calendar 2026, linking that outlook to the previously noted third-party capacity delays. Both figures were forecasts made during the October 28 earnings call.
