Microsoft earnings Q1 2019

Zach Gibson | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella smiles at a meeting of the Economic Club of Washington in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 4, 2017.

Microsoft will report fiscal first quarter earnings after market close on Wednesday. The company will hold a conference call to discuss the results with analysts at 5:30 p.m. Eastern.

Here are the numbers to look for:

• Earnings: 96 cents per share, excluding certain items, as expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.
• Revenue: $27.90 billion as expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.

The Refinitiv estimate shows analysts are modeling 13.7 percent revenue growth from Microsoft overall in the first quarter of the 2019 fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 30. That would be just below the 14 percent growth Microsoft had across its entire 2018 fiscal year.

Microsoft continues to emphasize the growth from its business-focused cloud services, which are tracked under the Commercial Cloud revenue metric. The company is challenging public cloud market leader Amazon Web Services with its Azure business, adding business users for its Office 365 cloud productivity app portfolio that competes with Alphabet’s Google G Suite and seeking to take market share from Salesforce with its Dynamics 365 software.

What’s different now is that Microsoft is starting to include commercial LinkedIn revenue, which includes products like LinkedIn Recruiter, in the Commercial Cloud tally. In a presentation to investors last month, Microsoft showed how adding commercial LinkedIn to Commercial Cloud revenue for the 2018 fiscal year would bump up the total by about $3.4 billion, reflecting an increase approaching 15 percent.

A few analysts have said in recent days they were expecting a lower growth rate for Azure. In a Sunday note, Evercore ISI analysts led by Kirk Materne predicted 78 percent Azure growth for the fiscal first quarter, slipping from 89 percent growth one quarter ago.

“While this level of deceleration may seem overly cautious given the momentum behind Azure in the market, we believe it is instructive for investors to understand that much of this deceleration is due to the leveling off of growth for the company’s Enterprise Mobility & Security (EMS) products, which are seat based, vs. any major deceleration in the IaaS/PaaS offerings,” the Evercore analysts wrote.

Microsoft hasn’t disclosed how much revenue Azure brings in, but the Evercore analysts estimated that it generated more $7.74 billion in the 2018 fiscal year. At that size, Azure would have represented 7 percent of Microsoft’s total annual revenue.

With respect to guidance, analysts are expecting a total of $32.25 billion in revenue for the second quarter of the 2019 fiscal year, implying 11.5 percent growth, according to Refinitiv.

Microsoft stock is down 8 percent in the past month, but it’s still up 23 percent since the beginning of the year. In the fiscal first quarter, Microsoft acquired Lobe and introduced a free tier of its Teams app, and CEO Satya Nadella sold around 30 percent of his common stock.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

WATCH: Microsoft exec: Want to enable any company to be a digital business