Microsoft still isn’t disclosing the size of its Azure business, providing only the growth rate for the cloud business and leaving investors guessing how its revenue compares to Amazon and Google.
But in its much smaller Dynamics business, which includes software for salespeople, marketers and customer-service agents, Microsoft has suddenly opted for greater transparency.
In its annual report to investors last week, Microsoft disclosed Dynamics revenue in a table alongside other products for the first time.
Dynamics contributed $5.44 billion in revenue in the 2023 fiscal year, which ended on June 30, growing 16% year over year, according to the filing, or double the growth rate of Microsoft as a whole. Dynamics expanded faster than any major product or service offering other than Server Products and Cloud Services, a grouping that contains Azure. It now represents 2.5% of Microsoft’s total revenue, up from 2.2% two years ago, the filing said.
While Dynamics is dramatically smaller than Microsoft’s dominant Office or Windows franchises or the younger Azure business, CEO Satya Nadella has opted to start emphasizing it more. Nadella, who once led a unit that included Dynamics, talked about the progress during the software maker’s earnings call last week.
“Dynamics surpassed $5 billion in revenue over the past fiscal year with our customer experience, service and finance and supply chain businesses, all surpassing $1 billion in annual sales,” Nadella said.
Microsoft’s principal competitor when it comes to Dynamics is Salesforce, whose business is significantly bigger. Technology industry researcher IDC estimates that Salesforce controlled about 23.8% of the market for customer relationship management applications in 2021, more than any other provider, while Microsoft had 5.3%. Both companies had gained share since 2019, while Oracle and SAP lost share, IDC said.
Nadella highlighted the introduction of generative artificial intelligence assistants for the cloud-based Dynamics 365 services. He also noted that Microsoft Sales Copilot, a tool capable of writing business-oriented email drafts, integrates with Dynamics as well as Salesforce’s software.
Partly motivated by Microsoft’s AI capabilities, some companies are switching to Dynamics from Salesforce, said Manny Medina, CEO of sales software startup Outreach. Dynamics can cost less money, and the underlying technology has improved, Medina told CNBC in an interview, adding that the growth is likely to continue.
“I’m seeing more requests to integrate into Dynamics, and more of my customers asking me to bring some of the things I have for Salesforce to carry over into Dynamics,” Medina said. “I’ve seen a spike in the last year.” Some of the momentum Outreach is seeing could be because the company began moving upmarket last year to serve larger companies, he said.
Meanwhile, Salesforce has hit some speed bumps in the past year. Bret Taylor, who briefly served alongside Marc Benioff as co-CEO, left in a surprise move. Revenue growth slowed at the company and activist investors announced ownership stakes. Salesforce responded by widening its adjusted operating margin earlier than planned and managed to avoid a proxy fight.
“Salesforce customer satisfaction numbers are at a record high and consistently trend above industry standards,” a Salesforce spokesperson told CNBC in an email. “Industry analysts continually rank Salesforce ahead of MSFT in all categories related to Dynamics.”
The spokesperson said elements of generative AI, which creates realistic text in response to human input after being trained on large data sets, are available in the Sales Cloud and Service Cloud products, and they’re being tested in Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, the Salesforce Platform and Slack.
As a brand, Dynamics predates Salesforce. It began in 1993, when North Dakota-based Great Plains Software released client-server financial management software for medium-sized businesses. Great Plains went public in 1997, and Microsoft bought the company for $1.1 billion in 2001. Doug Burgum, who was CEO of Great Plains at the time, is now North Dakota’s Republican governor and a candidate for president.
Microsoft isn’t just pushing Dynamics to investors. The company has been more aggressive in selling the product this year, said Adam Mansfield, a practice lead at consulting firm UpperEdge, which helps companies negotiate with software vendors. He said Microsoft is offering subsidies to prospective customers who are already committed to Salesforce, and Microsoft is more willing to help clients with the costs of consulting services to assist with implementation.
“Microsoft is pretty much coming in and going, ‘We’ll make it as cheap as you want,'” Mansfield said.
Anne Wojcicki attends the WSJ Magazine Style & Tech Dinner in Atherton, California, on March 15, 2023.
Kelly Sullivan | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki and New Mountain Capital have submitted a proposal to take the embattled genetic testing company private, according to a Friday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Wojcicki and New Mountain have offered to acquire all of 23andMe’s outstanding shares in cash for $2.53 per share, or an equity value of approximately $74.7 million. The company’s stock closed at $2.42 on Friday with a market cap of about $65 million.
The offer comes after a turbulent year for 23andMe, with the stock losing more than 80% of its value in 2024. In January, the company announced plans to explore strategic alternatives, which could include a sale of the company or its assets, a restructuring or a business combination.
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23andMe has a special committee of independent directors in place to evaluate potential paths forward. The company appointed three new independent directors to its board in October after all seven of its previous directors abruptly resigned the prior month. The special committee has to approve Wojcicki and New Mountain’s proposal.
“We believe that our Proposal provides compelling value and immediate liquidity to the Company’s public stockholders,” Wojcicki and Matthew Holt, managing director and president of private equity at New Mountain, wrote in a letter to the special committee on Thursday.
Wojcicki previously submitted a proposal to take the company private for 40 cents per share in July, but it was rejected by the special committee, in part because the members said it lacked committed financing and did not provide a premium to the closing price at the time.
Wojcicki and New Mountain are willing to provide secured debt financing to fund 23andMe’s operations through the transaction’s closing, the filing said. New Mountain is based in New York and has $55 billion of assets under management, according to its website.
Shares of Hims & Hers Health tumbled more than 23% on Friday after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that the shortage of semaglutide injection products has been resolved.
Semaglutide is the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk‘s blockbuster weight loss drug Wegovy and diabetes treatment Ozempic. Those medications are part of a class of drugs called GLP-1s, and demand for the treatments has exploded in recent years. As a result, digital health companies such as Hims & Hers have been prescribing compounded semaglutide as an alternative for patients who are navigating volatile supply hurdles and insurance obstacles.
Compounded drugs are custom-made alternatives to brand-name drugs designed to meet a specific patient’s needs, and compounders are allowed to produce them when brand-name treatments are in shortage. The FDA doesn’t review the safety and efficacy of compounded products.
Hims & Hers began offering compounded semaglutide to patients in May, and it owns compounding pharmacies that produce the medications.
Compounded medications are typically much cheaper than their branded counterparts. Hims & Hers sells compounded semaglutide for less than $200 per month, while Ozempic and Wegovy both cost around $1,000 per month without insurance.
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The FDA said Friday that it will start taking action against compounders for violations in the next 60 to 90 days, depending on the type of facility, in order to “avoid unnecessary disruption to patient treatment.”
“Now that the FDA has determined the drug shortage for semaglutide has been resolved, we will continue to offer access to personalized treatments as allowed by law to meet patient needs,” Hims & Hers CEO Andrew Dudum posted Friday on X. “We’re also closely monitoring potential future shortages, as Novo Nordisk stated two weeks ago that it would continue to have ‘capacity limitations’ and ‘expected continued periodic supply constraints and related drug shortage notifications.'”
Him & Hers’ weight loss offerings have been a massive hit with investors. Shares of the company climbed more than 200% last year, and the stock is already up more than 100% this year despite Friday’s move.
Even before it added compounded GLP-1s to its portfolio, the company said in its 2023 fourth-quarter earnings call that it expects its weight loss program to bring in more than $100 million in revenue by the end of 2025.
Despite the turbulent regulatory landscape, Hims & Hers has showed no signs of slowing down.
On Friday, the company announced it has acquired a U.S.-based peptide facility that will “further verticalize the company’s long-term ability to deliver personalized medications.” Hims & Hers will explore advances across metabolic optimization, recovery science, biological resistances, cognitive performance and preventative health through the acquisition, the company said.
That move comes just days after Hims & Hers also bought Trybe Labs, the New Jersey-based at-home lab testing facility. Trybe Labs will allow Hims & Hers to perform at-home blood draws and more comprehensive pretreatment testing.
Hims & Hers did not disclose the terms of either deal.
Tesla models Y and 3 are displayed at a Tesla dealership in Corte Madera, California, on Dec. 20, 2024.
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Tesla is voluntarily recalling 376,241vehicles in the U.S. to correct an issue with failing power-assisted steering systems, according to records posted to the website of the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
In a safety recall report posted on the NHTSA website, Tesla said the recall includes Model 3 and Model Y vehicles that were manufactured for sale in the U.S. from Feb. 28, 2023, to October 11, 2023, and that were equipped with a certain older software release.
The records said printed circuit boards in the steering systems in affected vehicles could become overstressed, causing the power-assist steering to fail in some cases when a Tesla vehicle rolled to a stop and then accelerated.
When electronic power-assist steering systems fail in a Tesla, drivers need to exert more force to steer their cars, which can increase the risk of a collision.
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Tesla told the vehicle safety regulator that it was not aware of any crashes, injuries or deaths related to the power steering failures, and that it was offering an over-the-air software update as a remedy.
The recall follows an earlier related probe and voluntary recall in China concerning the same systems.
President Donald Trump has appointed Tesla CEO Elon Musk to lead a team that is slashing the federal government workforce, and in some cases, regulations and entire agencies. Those cuts already affected the NHTSA, an agency Musk has long seen as standing in the way of some of his ambitions at Tesla.
The regulator has been engaged in a yearslong investigation into safety defects in the systems that Tesla markets currently as its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (Supervised) options. The features do not make Tesla cars into robotaxis. They require a human driver ready to steer or brake at any time.
The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Musk’s team has led mass firings at the NHTSA, reducing the agency’s workforce and capacity to investigate companies including Tesla by about 10%.