{"id":160464,"date":"2025-11-30T01:04:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T01:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/160464\/"},"modified":"2025-11-30T01:04:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T01:04:12","slug":"microsoft-new-zealand-sees-strong-revenue-growth-turnover-now-double-its-2021-level","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/160464\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft New Zealand sees strong revenue growth \u2013 turnover now double its 2021 level"},"content":{"rendered":"

Net profit rose 13% from $47.4m to $53.4m.<\/p>\n

Income tax expense was $17.9m from the year-ago $15.4m.<\/p>\n

The cost of sales was reported as $1.36b.<\/p>\n

A $45.0m dividend was paid to its parent company.<\/p>\n

The past year has seen Microsoft NZ back down on two controversies.<\/p>\n

One was the end of security upgrades for Windows 10 unless a customer paid $50.40 per computer to join an \u201cextended upgrade programme\u201d \u2013 a development that drew criticism from Consumer NZ and others. In the end, Microsoft provided most customers with an avenue to keep getting Windows 10 updates for free<\/a> until October 2026.<\/p>\n

Another was Microsoft 365 price increases of up to 38% as the company\u2019s Copilot artificial intelligence (AI) assistant was added to the software suite \u2013 with an option to remain on the old pricing, minus Copilot, hidden unless a customer went to cancel their subscription. After court action from Australia\u2019s market regulator (which is ongoing) and a warning letter from New Zealand\u2019s Commerce Commission, Microsoft offered refunds<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Microsoft'sMicrosoft’s hyperscale data centre at Westgate, northwest Auckland during the final stage of construction. It was live by December 2024. Photo \/ Chris Keall<\/p>\n

The local operation\u2019s success reflects Microsoft\u2019s global fortunes. On October 30, Microsoft Corp reported an 18% revenue jump<\/a> to US$77.7b ($134b) for its September quarter as demand for AI services boosted its cloud computing business as net profit rose 12% to $27.7b.<\/p>\n

While its partnership with OpenAI (in which Microsoft holds a 27% stake) helped fuel revenue growth, related losses of US$3.1b from the investment in the ChatGPT maker impacted net income for the quarter.<\/p>\n

Threat of tax on revenue melts away<\/p>\n

In May, Revenue Minister Simon Watts discharged<\/a> the Digital Services Tax Bill (introduced to the house under the Labour Government), which would have levied a flat 3% tax on Big Tech firms\u2019 New Zealand revenue.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been monitoring international developments and have decided not to progress the Digital Services Tax Bill at this time,\u201d Watts said.<\/p>\n

\u201cA global solution has always been our preferred option, and we have been encouraged by the recent commitment of countries to the OECD work in this area.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, US President Donald Trump said he did not support the OECD\u2019s push to implement a global minimum corporate tax.<\/p>\n

Former Finance Minister Grant Robertson first floated the idea of a 3% or 6% DST in 2019 but then put it on the backburner for most of the next four years.<\/p>\n

The Digital Services Tax Bill (for a 3% tax) was introduced in the final days of Parliament before the 2023 election. It didn\u2019t have time to get to a select committee, let alone pass.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the 2023 election, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade warned<\/a> that a digital services tax would raise less than $100m, with that amount likely to be lost to retaliatory tariffs and measures against cloud software firms like Xero who sell into the US market.<\/p>\n

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald\u2019s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Net profit rose 13% from $47.4m to $53.4m. Income tax expense was $17.9m from the year-ago $15.4m. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13991,9526,8609,3499,302,25449,609,117,111,43,139,425,69,15267,7493,29647,18835,29849,379,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-160464","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-13991","9":"tag-another","10":"tag-double","11":"tag-growth","12":"tag-its","13":"tag-level","14":"tag-microsoft","15":"tag-new","16":"tag-new-zealand","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-newzealand","19":"tag-now","20":"tag-nz","21":"tag-reported","22":"tag-revenue","23":"tag-sees","24":"tag-strong","25":"tag-turnover","26":"tag-year","27":"tag-zealand"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}