Microsoft MSFT shares are sliding after hours despite a top- and bottom-line beat...

• *MICROSOFT 4Q REV. $46.15B, EST. $44.26B (up 21%)
• *MICROSOFT 4Q EPS $2.17, EST. $1.92 (up 49%)

Microsoft's fiscal year total revenues were $168.1 billion, up 18% with diluted EPS up 40%.

“We are innovating across the technology stack to help organizations drive new levels of tech intensity across their business,” said Satya Nadella, chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft.

“Our results show that when we execute well and meet customers’ needs in differentiated ways in large and growing markets, we generate growth, as we’ve seen in our commercial cloud – and in new franchises we’ve built, including gaming, security, and LinkedIn, all of which surpassed $10 billion in annual revenue over the past three years.”

And under the hood things looked positive, beating expectations...

• Productivity and Business Processes revenue 14.69 billion, estimate $13.97 billion

• Intelligent Cloud revenue $17.38 billion, estimate $16.43 billion

• More Personal Computing revenue $14.09 billion, estimate $13.87 billion

“As we closed out the fiscal year, our sales teams and partners delivered a strong quarter with over 20% top and bottom-line growth, highlighted by commercial bookings growth of 30% year over year,” said Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft.

“Our commercial cloud revenue grew 36% year over year to $19.5 billion.”

Azure sales increased 51% in the period, and some investors hoped for a faster rate of growth, especially because that revenue rose 45% when accounting for currency fluctuations.

While Azure has been growing steadily, it faces steep competition for big deals from Amazon.com Inc., the dominant cloud service, and Google, which ranks third in the market but is pouring resources into the business as it works to catch up.

“People are not happy if Azure decelerates -- they’re worried the good days are over,” said Mark Moerdler, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein.

“People seem to worry Azure will never be as big as Amazon.”

But the hardware side appears to have spooked investors (although these are more secondary to Azure):

• *Microsoft 4Q Surface Revenue Down 20%
• *Microsoft 4Q Windows OEM Revenue Down 3%
• *Microsoft 4Q Xbox Content and Services Revenue Down 4%

Sending the stocks down over 3% after hours...

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Microsoft did not share a forecast in its release, as executives typically share their guidance in the company's conference call, which is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Eastern time and is typically a secondary catalyst for the stock in the extended session after earnings are released.