GDP

TSLA blasts through $154 resistance, $167.50 next up

Most importantly for traders, TSLA stock has surmounted the strong resistance at $154. This means that Tesla is almost certainly back in a sustained uptrend.

For CEO Elon Musk's Tesla, Thursday's market is a double-whammy. First, TSLA stock is dashing ahead based on Elon Musk's bullish delivery projections. Then US GDP data shows that the US economy is more robust than previously thought.

Elon Musk surprised the market late Wednesday when he said though Tesla's delivery guidance for 2023 was set at 1.8 million, January's strong order volume was leading him to believe that 2 million might be closer to the final figure. This is because Tesla's late December price cuts across most of its models was spurring a surge in new orders. In fact, Musk said that orders were nearly twice current production levels. High January volume though could always just be cannabalizing demand for later in the year.

Still shareholders saw a lot to be excited about. Besides strong demand, Tesla will begin work on a $3.5 billion plant in Nevada to start making semi-trucks. With price tags above half a million dollars, this market will surely greatly bulk up Tesla revenues. Additionally, early production will begin this Summer on the Cybertruck, though full commercial production will not begin until 2024.

Tesla stock was met with a host of price target raises by analysts on Thursday. Wedbush Securities raised their price target from $175 to $200. Cowen raised it from $122 to $140. Wells Fargo raised it from $130 to $150. Wolfe Research raised it from $160 to $185. Bank of America raised it from $130 to $155. Citigroup raised its price target from $137 to $146.

Tesla stock pushing back the $154 price level is quite significant. This price acted a strong resistance on a slew of occasions in the second half of 2020. This time it is not taking three tries. Tesla bulls now faces off against $167.50. This price level worked as resistance twice in 2020 and then again as support in November 2022. The next area of interest above $167.50 is the support zone between $180 and $182.50. Bulls should take note, however, that Tesla stock has advanced far into overbought territory on the Relative Strength Index (RSI), which normally means that a consolidation period is ahead. Based on the euphoria in markets, that does seem unlikely though.

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AUD/USD remains dicey around 0.7120-15 as bulls try hard to defend the five-day winning streak near the highest levels since June 2022 during early Friday. The Aussie pair’s latest struggle could be linked to the mixed Aussie data and cautious mood ahead of the Federal Reserve’s (Fed) preferred inflation gauge.

USD/JPY renews intraday low to 129.75 as Japan inflation data renews hawkish bias over the Bank of Japan (BoJ) during early Friday. The US Dollar’s lack of ability to extend the previous day’s rebound, as well as cautious mood ahead of the key inflation precursor tracked by the Federal Reserve (Fed), also weigh on the Yen pair.

Gold price has refreshed its day’s high at $1,935.00 in the Asian session. The precious metal picked strength after a minor drop below $1,930.00, which poised a bargain opportunity for gold buyers.

Hedera Hashgraph price continues to bless loyal investors as the scalable smart contract token has rallied by 117% since the start of the new year. On January 26, HBAR hovers in the mid $0.06 zone as a profit-taking rally occurred following the newly established monthly high at $.081.

Wall Street insiders continue to debate conflicting economic data and a possible earnings recession ahead. Data and earnings so far actually offer convincing evidence to support both sides of the arguments which is making it tough for either the bulls or the bears to gain an upper hand.

Credit: https://www.fxstreet.com/news/tesla-stock-forecast-tsla-blasts-through-154-resistance-16750-next-up-202301261601

Microsoft (MSFT) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Greetings, and welcome to the Microsoft fiscal year 2023 second quarter earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Brett Iversen, vice president, investor relations.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. On the call with me are Satya Nadella, chairman and chief executive officer; Amy Hood, chief financial officer; Alice Jolla, chief accounting officer; and Keith Dolliver, deputy general counsel. On the Microsoft Investor Relations website, you can find our earnings press release and financial summary slide deck, which is intended to supplement our prepared remarks during today's call and provides the reconciliation of differences between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. On this call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP items.

The non-GAAP financial measures provided should not be considered as a substitute for or superior to the measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. They are included as additional clarifying items to aid investors in further understanding the company's second-quarter performance in addition to the impact these items and events have on the financial results. All growth comparisons we make on the call today relate to the corresponding period of last year unless otherwise noted. We will also provide growth rates in constant currency when available as a framework for assessing how our underlying businesses performed, excluding the effect of foreign currency rate fluctuations.

They just revealed what they believe are the ten best stocks for investors to buy right now... and Microsoft wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.

Where growth rates are the same in constant currency, we'll refer to the growth rate only. We will post our prepared remarks to our website immediately following the call until the complete transcript is available. Today's call is being webcast live and recorded. If you ask a question, it will be included in our live transmission, in the transcript, and in any future use of the recording.

You can replay the call and view the transcript on the Microsoft Investor Relations website. During this call, we'll be making forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could materially differ because of factors discussed in today's earnings press release, in the comments made during this conference call, and in the Risk Factors section of our Form 10-K, Forms 10-Q, and other reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

We do not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statement. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Satya.

Thank you very much, Brett. I want to start with the context I shared with our employees last week on the changing environment and our priorities. As I meet with customers and partners, a few things are increasingly clear. Just as we saw customers accelerate their digital spend during the pandemic, we are now seeing them optimize that spend.

Also, organizations are exercising caution given the macroeconomic uncertainty. And the next major wave of computing is being born as we turn the world's most advanced AI models into a new computing platform. In this environment, we remain convicted on three things. This is an important time for Microsoft to work with our customers, helping them realize more value from their tech spend and building long-term loyalty and share position while internally aligning our own cost structure with our revenue growth.

This, in turn, sets us up to participate in the secular trend where digital spend as a percentage of GDP is only going to increase. And lastly, we're going to lead in the AI era, knowing that maximum enterprise value gets created during platform shifts. With that as a backdrop, the Microsoft Cloud exceeded $27 billion in quarterly revenue, up 22% and 29% in constant currency. Now I'll highlight examples of our innovation starting with Azure.

Moving to the cloud is the best way for any customer in today's economy to mitigate demand uncertainty and energy costs while gaining efficiencies of cloud-native development. Enterprises have moved millions of cases to Azure and run twice as many calls on our cloud today than they did two years ago. And yet, we're still in the early innings when it comes to long-term cloud opportunity. As an example, insurer AIA was able to save more than 20% by migrating to Azure and reduced IT provisioning time from multiple months to just an hour.

We also continue to lead with hybrid computing with Azure Arc. We now have more than 12,000 Arc customers, double the number a year ago, including companies like Citrix, Northern Trust, and PayPal. Now on to data. Customers continue to choose and implement the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform over the competition because of its comprehensiveness, integration, and lower cost.

Bayer, for example, used the data stack to evaluate results from clinical trials faster and more efficiently while meeting regulatory requirements, and ASOS chose Cosmos DB to power real-time product recommendations and order processing for over 26 million global customers. Now, on to AI. The age of AI is upon us and Microsoft is powering it. We are witnessing nonlinear improvements in capability of foundation models, which we are making available as platforms.

And as customers select their cloud providers and invest in new workloads, we are well-positioned to capture that opportunity as a leader in AI. We have the most powerful AI supercomputing infrastructure in the cloud. It's being used by customers and partners like OpenAI to train state-of-the-art models and services, including ChatGPT. Just last week, we made our Azure OpenAI service broadly available, and already over 200 customers from KPMG to Al Jazeera are using it.

We will soon add support for ChatGPT, enabling customers to use it in their own applications for the first time. And yesterday, we announced the completion of the next phase of our agreement with OpenAI. We are pleased to be their exclusive cloud provider, and we'll deploy their models across our consumer and enterprise products as we continue to push the state-of-the-art in AI. All of this innovation is driving growth across our Azure AI services.

Azure ML revenue alone has increased more than 100% for five quarters in a row with companies like AXA, FedEx, and H&R Block choosing the service to deploy, manage and govern their models. Now, on to developers. Modernizing applications is mission-critical to any company's operations today. And with GitHub, Visual Studio, and Azure Pass services, we have the most comprehensive portfolio of tools to help.

GitHub is now home to 100 million developers and GitHub Copilot is the first at-scale AI product built for this era, fundamentally transforming developer productivity. More than 1 million people have used Copilot to date. This quarter, we brought Copilot to businesses, and we have seen strong interest and early adoption from companies, including Duolingo, Lemonade, and Volkswagen CARIAD Software Group. Now, on to Power Platform.

Power Platform is becoming an essential digital transformation tool as every business looks to streamline their operations and drive productivity in today's environment. We are helping customers realize superior time to value with our end-to-end suite spanning low-code, no-code tools, automation, virtual agents, and business intelligence. We are leading in robotic process automation. Power Automate has more than 45,000 customers from AT&T to Rabobank, up over 50% year over year.

And we are making it easier for anyone to streamline repetitive tasks, introducing new AI-powered features to turn natural language prompts into complex workflows. Now, on to business applications. Dynamics 365 is taking share as we help businesses digitize their service, finance, customer experience, and supply chain functions. For example, J&J, Pepsi-Cola Bottlers is moving from reactive to predictive field service.

Fuji Films is optimizing its operations. Investec is closing deals faster with conversational intelligence. Baylor Scott & White in Texas is using our digital contact center to enhance patient communications. And this quarter, we introduced our new supply chain platform, helping customers like iFit and Kraft Heinz apply AI to predict and mitigate disruptions.

Now, on to Industry Solutions. Our industry and cross-industry clouds are driving pull-through for our entire tech stack. Our cloud for retail was front and center at NRF last week as we introduced new tools to help retailers manage their day-to-day operations and digitize their physical stores. Polish retailer Zabka has built the largest chain of autonomous stores in Europe with the help of our technology.

In Financial Services, our new partnership with London Stock Exchange Group will deliver next generation of data analytics and workspace solutions. And in healthcare, we are rapidly becoming the partner of choice for any provider looking to generate real value from AI. With Nuance DAX ambient intelligence solution, physicians can reduce documentation time by half, improving the quality of their patient interactions. Now, on to systems of work.

Microsoft 365, Teams, and Viva are essential for every organization to adapt to the new world of work. Microsoft 365 is rapidly evolving into an AI-first platform that enables every individual to amplify their creativity and productivity with both our established applications, as well as new applications like Designer, Stream, and Loop. We have more than 63 million consumer subscribers, up 12% year over year, and we introduced Microsoft 365 Basic, bringing our premium offerings to more people. Teams surpassed 280 million monthly active users this quarter, showing durable momentum since the pandemic, and we continue to take share across every category from collaboration to chat to meetings to calling.

Teams has emerged as a first-class platform. Apps from Adobe, Atlassian, Poly, ServiceNow, and Workday have each surpassed 0.5 million active users, and the number of third-party apps with more than 10,000 users increased nearly 40% year over year. There are more than 500,000 active Teams Rooms devices, up 70% year over year, and the number of customers with more than 1,000 rooms doubled year over year. Novo Nordisk will deploy Teams Rooms to 5,000 meeting rooms globally in our largest deal to date.

Teams Phone continues to take share and is the market leader in cloud calling. We have added more than 5 million PSTN seats over the last 12 months alone. With Teams Premium, we are meeting enterprise demand for advanced features like end-to-end encryption and AI-powered recaps. We have seen strong interest in preview, and we will make it broadly available next month.

With Microsoft Viva, we have created a new market category for employee experience and organizational productivity. U.S. Bank is using Viva to streamline employee communications, and Carlsberg turned to Viva to centralize its digital employee experience for 29,000 employees. In today's environment, aligning the entire organization and the most important work is critical.

Viva Goals brings objectives and key results directly into the flow of daily work. Viva has also become an indispensable tool for business process. Viva Sales is the super app in Microsoft 365 for sellers. We have seen strong interest since making it generally available this quarter.

All up, we continue to see organizations consolidate on Microsoft 365. 80% of our enterprise customers use five or more Microsoft 365 applications. And organizations across the private and public sector, including EY, IKEA, NTT Communications, Rio Tinto, as well as the state government of Virginia are increasingly choosing our premium E5 offerings for advanced security, compliance, voice, and analytics. Now, on to Windows.

While the number of PCs shipped declined during the quarter, returning to pre-pandemic levels, usage intensity of Windows continues to be higher than pre pandemic with time spent per PC up nearly 10%. Monthly active devices also reached an all-time high this quarter. And for commercial customers, Windows 11 adoption continues to grow because of its differentiated security and productivity value proposition. We're also seeing growth in cloud-delivered Windows with usage of Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop up by over two-thirds year over year.

Leaders in every industry from Campari and Grant Thornton U.K. to Nutrien and Woolworths are using cloud-delivered Windows, including more than 60% of the Fortune 500. Now, on to security. Over the past 12 months, our security business surpassed $20 billion in revenue as we help customers protect their digital estate across clouds and endpoint platforms.

We're the only company with integrated end-to-end tools spanning identity, security, compliance, device management, and privacy informed and trained on over 65 trillion signals each day. We are taking share across all major categories we serve. Customers are consolidating on our security stack in order to reduce risk, complexity, and cost. The number of organizations with four or more workloads increased over 40% year over year.

U.K. retailer Fraser Group, for example, consolidated from 10 security vendors to just Microsoft. Roku moved identity and access management to the cloud with Azure Active Directory. And Estella Pharma, Ferrovial, and University of Toronto all switched to Microsoft Sentinel because of our integrated XDR and SIM capabilities.

Now, on to LinkedIn. People and companies continue to look to LinkedIn to connect, learn, sell, and get hired. We once again saw record engagement among our more than 900 million members. Three members are signing up every second.

Over 80% of these members are from outside the United States. And as the members come to the platform to find and share professional knowledge and expertise, newsletter creation was up 10x year over year. Skills are the new currency and people are increasingly investing in their skill-building to keep up with their changing roles in industries. We offer more than 20,000 courses in 11 languages, and companies are also turning to a skills-based approach in place of degree or pedigree to identify qualified talent, with more than 45% of the hires on LinkedIn explicitly using skills data to fill their roles.

Finally, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions continues to be a leader in B2B digital advertising, helping companies deliver the right message to the right audience on a safe and trusted platform. Now, on to advertising. Despite headwinds in the ad market, we continue to innovate across our first- and third-party portfolios. Our browser, Microsoft Edge gained share for the seventh consecutive quarter.

Bing continues to gain share in the United States, and daily users of our Start personalized content feed increased over 30% year over year. We are now empowering retailers and expanding our third-party inventory. With PromoteIQ, we are building a complete omnichannel media platform for companies like the Australian retailer, Endeavor, as well as Canada's Hudson's Bay and Global, the largest Brazilian TV broadcasters chose Xandr to launch a new media buying platform in that market. Now, on to gaming.

In gaming, we continue to pursue our ambition to give players more choice to play great games wherever, whenever, and however they want. We saw new highs for Game Pass subscriptions, game streaming hours, and monthly active devices, and monthly active users surpassed a record 120 million during the quarter. We continue to invest to add value to Game Pass. This quarter, we partnered with Riot Games to make the company's PC and mobile games, along with premium content available to subscribers.

And finally, we are energized by our upcoming lineup of AAA game launches, including exciting new titles from ZeniMax and Xbox Game Studios, and we'll be sharing details in gameplay at our showcase tomorrow. In closing, I want to extend my deepest gratitude to our employees for their continued dedication to our mission, customers, and partners. We will continue to pursue our long-term opportunity and innovation agenda with urgency while also raising the bar on our operational excellence. With that, I'll hand it over to Amy.

Thank you, Satya, and good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to start by reiterating Satya's thoughts on the changing environment and our priorities, which underpin the decisions communicated in last week's announcement. The resulting Q2 charge negatively impacted gross margin by $152 million, operating income by $1.2 billion, and earnings per share by $0.12. Our second quarter revenue was $52.7 billion, up 2% and 7% in constant currency.

When adjusted for the charge, gross margin dollars increased 2% and 8% in constant currency, operating income decreased 3% and increased 6% in constant currency, and earnings per share was $2.32, which decreased 6% and increased 2% in constant currency. In our consumer business, the PC market was in line with our expectations, but execution challenges impacted our Surface business. Advertising spend declined slightly more than expected, which impacted search and news advertising and LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. In our commercial business, we delivered strong growth in line with our expectations.

However, as you heard from Satya, we are seeing customers exercise caution in this environment, and we saw results weaken through December. We saw moderated consumption growth in Azure and lower-than-expected growth in new business across the stand-alone Office 365, EMS, and Windows commercial products that are sold outside the Microsoft 365 suite. From a geographic perspective, we saw strong execution in many regions around the world. However, performance in the U.S.

was weaker than expected. Importantly, we continued to see share gains in areas such as data and AI, Dynamics, Teams, Security, and Edge. Commercial bookings increased 7% and 4% in constant currency, lower than expected. Consistent execution across our renewal sales motions, including strong recapture rates, and growth in Azure commitments on a high prior-year comparable were partially offset by the slowdown in growth of new stand-alone business noted earlier.

Commercial remaining performance obligation increased 29% to 26% in constant currency to $189 billion. Roughly 45% will be recognized in revenue in the next 12 months, up 24% year over year. The remaining portion, which will be recognized beyond the next 12 months, increased 32%. Our annuity mix increased two points year over year to 96%.

FX decreased total company revenue by five points, in line with expectations. At a segment level, FX decreased Productivity and Business Processes revenue growth by six points, one point favorable to expectations. FX impact on Intelligent Cloud and More Personal Computing were both in line with expectations. Additionally, FX decreased both COGS and operating expense growth by two points, one point unfavorable to expectations.

Microsoft Cloud revenue was $27.1 billion and grew 22% and 29% in constant currency, ahead of expectations. Microsoft Cloud gross margin percentage increased roughly two points year over year to 72%, a point better than expected, driven by lower energy costs. Excluding the impact of the change in accounting estimate for useful lives, Microsoft Cloud gross margin percentage decreased roughly one point, primarily driven by sales mix shift to Azure. Company gross margin percentage was 67%.

Excluding the impact of the change in accounting estimate, gross margin percentage decreased roughly two points, driven by a lower mix of Windows OEM revenue and sales mix shift from licensing to cloud. Operating expense when adjusted for the Q2 charge increased 11% and 13% in constant currency, about $500 million lower than expected. Operating expense growth was driven by investments in cloud engineering, the Nuance acquisition, and LinkedIn. At a total company level, headcount ended December 19% higher than a year ago.

Sequential headcount growth was less than 1%. Year-over-year growth included roughly six points from the Nuance and Xandr acquisitions, which closed last Q3 and Q4, respectively. Adjusted for the charge, operating margins decreased roughly two points year over year to 41%. Excluding the impact of the change in accounting estimate, operating margins declined roughly four points, primarily driven by unfavorable FX impact, as well as a lower mix of OEM revenue.

Now, to our segment results. Revenue from Productivity and Business Processes was $17 billion and grew 7% and 13% in constant currency, in line with expectations when excluding the favorable FX impact noted earlier. Office Commercial revenue grew 7% and 14% in constant currency. Office 365 Commercial revenue increased 11% and 18% in constant currency, slightly better than expected with healthy renewal execution and ARPU growth as E5 momentum remains strong.

Paid Office 365 Commercial seats grew 12% year over year with installed base expansion across all workloads and customer segments. Seat growth was driven by our small and medium business and frontline worker offerings, although we saw some impact from the slowdown in growth of new business noted earlier. Office Consumer revenue declined 2% and increased 3% in constant currency, with continued momentum in Microsoft 365 subscriptions, which grew 12% to 63.2 million, partially offset by declines in our transactional business. LinkedIn revenue increased 10% and 14% in constant currency, driven by growth in Talent Solutions, partially offset by weakness in Marketing Solutions from the advertising trends noted earlier.

Dynamics revenue grew 13% and 20% in constant currency, driven by Dynamics 365, which grew 21% and 29% in constant currency. Segment gross margin dollars increased 8% and 16% in constant currency, and gross margin percentage increased roughly one point year over year. Excluding the impact of the change in accounting estimate, gross margin percentage decreased slightly, driven by sales mix shift to cloud offerings. Operating expense increased 12% and 14% in constant currency, including roughly five points from the Q2 charge.

Operating income increased 6% and 17% in constant currency as the three points of favorable impact due to the change in accounting estimate were offset by three points of unfavorable impact from the Q2 charge noted earlier. Next, the Intelligent Cloud segment. Revenue was $21.5 billion, increasing 18% and 24% in constant currency, in line with expectations. Overall, server products and cloud services revenue increased 20% and 26% in constant currency.

Azure and other cloud services revenue grew 31% and 38% in constant currency. As noted earlier, growth continued to moderate, particularly in December, and we exited the quarter with Azure constant-currency growth in the mid-30s. In our per-user business, the Enterprise Mobility and Security installed base grew 16% to over 241 million seats with impact from the slowdown in growth of new business noted earlier. In our on-premises server business, revenue decreased 2% and increased 2% in constant currency, with continued hybrid demand offset by weakness in transactional licensing.

Enterprise Services revenue grew 2% and 7% in constant currency. Segment gross margin dollars increased 17% and 23% in constant currency, and gross margin percentage decreased slightly. Excluding the impact of the change in accounting estimate, gross margin percentage declined roughly three points, driven by sales mix shift to Azure and higher energy costs. Operating expenses increased 34% and 37% in constant currency, including roughly 13 points of impact from the Q2 charge noted earlier and roughly seven points of impact from the Nuance acquisition.

Operating income grew 7% and 15% in constant currency as roughly seven points of favorable impact of the change in accounting estimate was offset by approximately seven points of unfavorable impact from the Q2 charge. Now, to More Personal Computing. Revenue was $14.2 billion, decreasing 19% and 16% in constant currency, below expectations driven by Surface, Windows Commercial, and search. Windows OEM revenue decreased 39% year over year, in line with expectations.

Excluding the impact from the Windows 11 deferral last year, revenue declined 36% on a strong prior-year comparable. Devices revenue decreased 39% to 34% in constant currency, below expectations due to execution challenges on new product launches. Windows Commercial products and cloud services revenue declined 3% and increased 3% in constant currency, lower than expected, primarily due to the slowdown in growth of new business and stand-alone offerings noted earlier. Search and news advertising revenue ex TAC increased 10% and 15% in constant currency, a bit lower than expected, as noted earlier.

Our Edge browser gained more share than expected this quarter. The Xandr acquisition contributed roughly six points of benefit. And in gaming, revenue declined 13% and 9% in constant currency, in line with expectations. Xbox hardware revenue declined 13% and 9% in constant currency.

Xbox content and services revenue declined 12% and 8% in constant currency, given the strong first-party content last year. Segment gross margin dollars declined 29% and 24% in constant currency, and gross margin percentage decreased roughly seven points year over year, driven by lower device gross margin and sales mix shift to lower-margin businesses. Operating expenses increased 6% and 9% in constant currency, including roughly six points of impact from the Q2 charge noted earlier and three points of impact from the Xandr acquisition. Operating income decreased 47% and 40% in constant currency, including roughly six points of unfavorable impact from the Q2 charge noted earlier.

Now back to total company results. Capital expenditures, including finance leases, were $6.8 billion to support cloud demand. Cash paid for PP&E was $6.3 billion. Cash flow from operations was $11.2 billion, down 23% year over year as strong cloud billings and collections were more than offset by a tax payment related to the TCJA capitalization of R&D provision, as well as higher employee and supplier payments.

Free cash flow was $4.9 billion, down 43% year over year. Excluding the impact of this tax payment, cash flow from operations declined 7% and free cash flow declined 16%. This quarter, other income and expense was negative $60 million, lower than anticipated, driven by a mark-to-market loss on a forward share purchase agreement. Our effective tax rate was approximately 19%.

And finally, we returned $9.7 billion to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends. Now, moving to our Q3 outlook, which, unless specifically noted otherwise, is on a U.S. dollar basis. My commentary for both the full year and next quarter does not include any impact from Activision, which we continue to work toward closing in fiscal year 2023, subject to obtaining required regulatory approvals.

First, FX. Based on current rates, we now expect FX to decrease total revenue growth by approximately three points, COGS growth by one point, and operating expense growth by two points. Within the segments, we anticipate roughly four points of negative impact on revenue growth in Productivity and Business Processes, three points in Intelligent Cloud, and two points in More Personal Computing. In our Consumer business, Windows OEM and devices will see continued declines as the PC market returns to pre-pandemic levels.

And LinkedIn and search will be impacted as ad market spending remains a bit cautious. In our Commercial business, we expect business trends that we saw at the end of December to continue into Q3. While customers are more cautious in their spend, we also have the opportunity to improve our execution, given our strong position in global growth markets. In commercial bookings, with a declining expiry base and the strong prior-year comparable in terms of large Azure contracts, we expect growth to be relatively flat over year.

We expect consistent execution across our core and sales motions and continued commitments to our platform will be offset by impact from the slowdown of new business noted earlier and three points of unfavorable impact from the inclusion of Nuance in the prior year. Microsoft Cloud gross margin percentage should be up roughly one point year over year, driven by the accounting estimate change noted earlier. Excluding that impact, Q3 cloud gross margin percentage will decrease roughly one point, driven by Azure. In capital expenditures, we expect a sequential increase on a dollar basis with normal quarterly spend variability in the timing of our cloud infrastructure build-out.

Our data center investments continue to be based on a near-term and longer-term customer demand, including AI opportunities. Next, segment guidance. In Productivity and Business Processes, we expect revenue to grow between 11% and 13% in constant currency, or $16.9 billion to $17.2 billion. In Office Commercial, revenue growth will again be driven by Office 365 with seat growth across customer segments and ARPU growth through E5.

We expect Office 365 revenue growth to be sequentially lower by roughly one point on a constant-currency basis. In our on-premises business, we expect revenue to decline in the mid-20s. In Office Consumer, we expect revenue growth in the low single digits, driven by Microsoft 365 subscriptions. For LinkedIn, we expect mid-single-digit revenue growth with continued strong engagement on the platform, although impacted by the advertising trends noted earlier and the slowdown in hiring, particularly in the technology industry, where we have significant exposure.

And in Dynamics, we expect revenue growth to be in the low to mid-teens, driven by continued growth in Dynamics 365, which is now over 80% of total Dynamics revenue. For Intelligent Cloud, we expect revenue to grow between 17% and 19% in constant currency or $21.7 billion to $22 billion. Revenue will continue to be driven by Azure which, as a reminder, can have quarterly variability primarily from our per-user business and from in-period revenue recognition depending on the mix of contracts. In Azure, our per-user business should continue to benefit from Microsoft 365 suite momentum, though we expect continued moderation in growth rate given the size of the installed base.

As I noted earlier, we exited Q2 with Azure growth in the mid-30s in constant currency. And from that, we expect Q3 growth to decelerate roughly four to five points in constant currency. FX impact in Azure is about one point more than at the segment level. In our on-premises server business, we expect revenue to decline low single digits as demand for our hybrid solutions will be more than offset by unfavorable FX impact.

And in Enterprise Services, revenue should decline low to mid-single digits, driven by Microsoft Consulting Services. In More Personal Computing, we expect revenue of $11.9 billion to $12.3 billion. Windows OEM revenue should decline in the mid- to high 30s, in line with the PC market. We expect Q3 PC units to be similar to pre-pandemic levels.

In devices, revenues should decline in the mid-40s as we work through the execution challenges noted earlier. In Windows Commercial products and cloud services on a strong prior-year comparable, revenue should be relatively flat as customer demand for Microsoft 365 and our advanced security solutions will be partially offset by the slowdown in new business noted earlier. Search and news advertising ex TAC should grow high single digits, roughly seven points faster than overall search and news advertising revenue, driven by continued volume strength supported by Edge browser share gains and the inclusion of Xandr. And in gaming, on a prior-year comparable that benefited from increased console supply, we expect revenue to decline in the high single digits.

We expect Xbox content and services revenue to decline in the low single digits as growth in Xbox Game Pass subscriptions will be more than offset by lower monetization per hour and third-party and first-party content. Now, back to company guidance. We expect COGS to grow between 1% and 2% in constant currency or to be between $15.65 billion and $15.85 billion and operating expense to grow between 11% and 12% at constant currency or be $14.7 billion to $14.8 billion. Other income and expense should be roughly $200 million as interest income is expected to more than offset interest expense.

As a reminder, we are required to recognize mark-to-market gains and losses on our equity portfolio, which can increase quarterly volatility. We expect our Q3 effective tax rate to be between 19% and 20%. And finally, as a reminder, for Q3 cash flow, we expect to make a $1.2 billion cash tax payment related to the TCJA capitalization of R&D provision. Now, some thoughts on H2 and the full year.

First, in our Commercial business, revenue grew 20% on a constant-currency basis in H1. However, we now expect to see a deceleration in H2 given how we exited December. Next, higher energy costs for the full year are now expected to be $500 million compared to our previous estimate of $800 million. Third, as we continue to prioritize our investments and anniversary the Nuance and Xandr acquisitions, our Q4 operating expense growth should be in the low single digits in constant currency.

Finally, we remain committed to operational excellence, aligning cost and growth, investing in our customer success, and leading the AI platform wave. As a result, when excluding the Q2 charge and favorable impact from the change in accounting estimate, we expect full-year operating margins to be down roughly one point in constant currency and roughly two points in USD, even with the headwinds from materially lower OEM revenue and higher energy costs. In the first half of the year, over 70% of our revenue came from our Commercial business and over 70% of that from Microsoft Cloud. We have a resilient foundation and durable growth markets where we are gaining share.

I'm confident in the ability of our Microsoft team to manage the near term by continuing to position ourselves for the future. With that, let's go to Q&A. Brett?

Thanks, Amy. We'll now move over to the Q&A. Out of respect for others on the call, we request that participants please only ask one question. Joe, can you please repeat your instructions?

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Keith Weiss with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed.

Excellent. Thank you, guys, for taking the question. I was hoping we could delve into the expansion of the investment into OpenAI. Satya, I was hoping you could talk to us about, is there any expansion in the scope of what you guys are doing with OpenAI and the commitment that you guys are making in terms of sort of the compute capacity you're going to be giving to them? And then maybe as from an investor's perspective, how should we think about when this functionality is going to become -- expand beyond just sort of the Azure OpenAI services? And where are we going to start to see some of the positive impacts to perhaps Bing or the productivity suite or more broadly across the solution portfolio?

Thank you so much, Keith, for the question. So, as you know, we started the OpenAI partnership now in three years, three and a half years ago. And we've been actually working very hard on a lot of elements of this partnership over the last three years. And so, I think the way for our investors to see this is we fundamentally believe that the next big platform wave, as I said, is going to be AI and be strong.

We also believe a lot of the enterprise value gets created by just being able to catch these waves and then have those waves impact every part of our tech stack and also create new solutions and new opportunities. So, whenever we think about platform opportunities and platform shift opportunities, that's how we come at it. How can we essentially ride the wave for everything that we have today and make it more expansive and then what can be created? So, if you take that lens, the core of Azure, or what is considered cloud computing fundamentally changes in its nature and how compute, storage, and network come together. That's, in some sense, under the radar, if you will, for the last three and a half, four years, we've been working very, very hard to build both the training supercomputers and now, of course, the inference infrastructure because once you use AI inside of your applications, it goes from just being training-heavy to inference.

So, I think core Azure itself is being transformed for the core infrastructure business. It's being transformed. And so, you can see us with data beyond Azure OpenAI services even, think about what Synapse plus OpenAI APIs can do. We already have Power Platform incorporated capability.

You could prompt a -- I mean, one of the reasons why we are the leaders in robotic process automation and workflow automation today is because of some of the AI capabilities that we have in there. GitHub Copilot is, in fact, you would say, the most at-scale LLM-based product out there in the marketplace today. And so, we fully expect us to sort of incorporate AI in every layer of the stack, whether it's in productivity, whether it's in our consumer services. And so, we're excited about it.

But I think that we're also excited about OpenAI innovation, right? So, they commercialize their products. We're excited about the ChatGPT being built on Azure and having the traction it has. So, we look to both, there's an investment part to it and there's a commercial partnership. But fundamentally, it's going to be something that's going to drive, I think, innovation and competitive differentiation in every one of the Microsoft solutions by leading in AI.

Outstanding. Thank you, guys.

Thanks. Joe, next question, please.

Our next question comes from the line of Brent Thill with Jefferies. Please proceed.

Thanks. Satya, can you give us your overall macro view? There were some comments you had made that concerned, I think, many about the state of the U.S. spending environment. I'm just curious if you could comment and follow up on what you're seeing there just from a spend environment throughout the year.

I think many came away with that seeming that you were saying it's getting worse, not better. Can you just give us a little more color on that? Thank you.

Thank you, Brent, and first of all, I was making a comment which is sort of a global comment, not just a specific U.S. comment. I mean, there is only -- I always sort of subscribe to that there's only one law of gravity that I think all of us are subject to, which is inflation-adjusted economic growth in the world. And then how many times that do we grow? Because as I said in my I fundamentally believe tech as a percentage of GDP is going to be much higher and on a secular basis.

So, the question is, how many times is it given the overall inflation-adjusted economic growth? So, that's kind of how I look at it. Given that, I think the two things that we see, we commented on that even in the last quarter, and it's even in the outlook, which is the thing that customers are doing is what they accelerated during the pandemic. They are making sure that they're getting most value out of it or optimizing it. And then also being a bit more cautious on given the macroeconomic headwinds out there in the market.

So, given those two things -- the point is, at some point, the optimizations will end. In fact, the money that they save in any optimization of any workload is what they into workloads. And those workloads will start ramping up. And so, one of the key things we are watching for, Brent, is to make sure that we are gaining share in this space through our value propositions and even build loyalty with our customers so that long term, we are well-positioned for share gains.

So, that's sort of fundamentally how we view it. And then the other aspect I'd also say is simultaneously investing in this new AI trend because I don't think any application start that happens next is going to look like the application starts of 2019 or 2020. They're all going to have considerations around how is my AI inference performance, cost model is going to look like. And that's where we are well positioned again.

So, that's how I view it. The market, you all are better readers of, quite frankly, what's happening out there. We can tell you what we see. What we see is optimization and some cautious approach to new workloads and that will cycle through, but we do fundamentally believe on a long-term basis, as a percentage of GDP, tech spend is going to go up.

Thanks, Brent. Joe, next question, please.

Our next question comes from the line of Mark Moerdler with Bernstein. Please proceed.

Thank you very much. I'd like to follow up a little bit on this question relating to optimization. I know we saw some slowing this quarter. You're guiding to some slowing next quarter in Cloud and Azure.

How much of that is -- do you believe at this point is truly people optimizing what they've already bought and stepping that before that versus how much of that is due to macro factors themselves specifically impacting demand?

I'd say two things, and then, Amy, please feel free to add. One is, it absolutely is -- starts with workloads that they have at scale just because of the visibility one has on what's driving essentially the consumption meters. And there's real guidance that we ourselves in the product to say, here are the things that you do optimize your billing. And so that's sort of what is the fundamental thing.

When we say do more with less and how can we help, that's sort of the first place customers go to. And then the next piece, really, I think, is going to be about how they take the optimization that they get and the savings they get workload and what new project starts. And that's where I think there's a reprioritization. When should we start the new projects? Those are the two things that are happening simultaneously.

They don't perfectly match, but one of the things is they're looking to back some savings on some workloads and then start. So, that's where I think a little bit of what has to happen is the cycle time where the optimization cycle finishes, the projects start, and then the projects ramp. And I think that that's what at least on the cloud consumption side you're seeing. And on the per-user side, it's slightly different, which is in per-user also, there was real acceleration when it comes to purchases of per-user licenses, whether it is for knowledge workers or frontline workers.

And again, they're all now making sure that they're all getting used and the usage is going up. Like when we look at our Office 365 usage, all those numbers are pretty up year over year in a substantial way. Like I gave you some of the Teams numbers. In fact, one of the things was, what will have Teams usage after the pandemic.

Guess what? They're up. And so, those are the good news. And now once we cycle through that again, the seats will get added and premium, like I'm very, very excited about Teams Pro coming out in a couple of weeks. And those are all the things that people will be able to sort of use to ensure that the ARPUs are also going up a bit value.

And, Mark, because I do think it's actually quite hard to separate from a driver perspective how much is optimization versus macro. It's all related when you start to say what's the best ROI I can get on every budget dollar I spend, and our job as a partner to so many of these customers is to help them do that. So, Satya has talked a bit about Azure. Let me talk a little bit about the per-user where the way it showed itself is we had very high renewal rates and very good suite performance at renewal, meaning what we tend to call internally recapture.

While we had some more challenges on maybe a stand-alone sale of a new product where the cycle is going to be a little longer, right, and you're going to have to show that cost savings. But the suite sale, the value in that showed itself in terms of strong E5. You can see the ARPU growth, and you can see the consistency potentially in both renewal rate and in, frankly, the Microsoft 365 performance.

Perfect. Thank you very much.

Yeah. Thanks, Mark. Joe, next question, please.

Our next question comes from the line of Kash Rangan with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed.

Thank you very much. Satya, I'm curious if you could talk about how long the cycle time for optimization lasts. Are we talking a couple of quarters, few quarters, or multiple years? Because I do take your comment about tech spending as a percentage of global GDP going higher. So, if that were to happen, this -- how do you frame the duration of this optimization that's happening in the industry? Thank you so much.

I mean, you know, I think that you can -- you have a workload, you optimize the workload, and you start a new workload. So, the thing that I would say is when you're done with optimizing a workload is when you are done with the cycle. So, I think if you sort of say, when did we enter this -- we accelerated workloads during the pandemic over a period of two years. So, we are optimizing.

I don't think we're going to take two years to optimize, but we're going to take this year to optimize. And then as we optimize the new projects start and the new project starts don't start instantly at their peak usage. They start and then they scale. And so, those are the two cycles that will happen where there will be a time lag.

Got it. So, it's a temporary adjustment before we start to get the full effect of the next set of workloads. Good to get that.

That's correct. That's correct.

Thanks, Kash. Joe, next question, please.

The next question comes from the line of Karl Keirstead with UBS. Please proceed.

Thank you. This one for Amy. Amy, given the obviously tough environment, it sounds like reaching that full fiscal year 20% constant-currency Commercial revs guide would be tough. Is that also true for the soft guidance for 10%-plus total revenue growth for the year? And if I could just sneak in a clarification, Amy, just because it's an important metric.

When you talk about a four- to five-point decel in Azure, that's off of the 38% reported for December, right, not off the 35% exit rate? Thank you.

It's all -- Karl, let me just -- the first half of your question, give me a second. On the second half of your question, which is the guide off the exit rate, it's off the exit rate on Azure of four to five points, just to make sure that is clear. In terms of thinking about total year revenue, right, I did not comment on full-year revenue as we continue, I think, really just to watch the Windows PC market as it returns to pre-pandemic levels. Outside of that, as you can see, the trends are relatively consistent.

So, in some points, it's important because if you look at the operating income margin guidance that I talked about, the fact that we are guiding to really only one point of margin deceleration for the year on a constant-currency basis with probably over $2 billion of headwind from the OEM business from what we had anticipated heading into the year, the focus on margins, the focus on prioritization, the focus on putting our investments into where we know they have high return, I actually feel quite good about the place that puts us in as we exit the year in terms of -- and the right energy, right, or leaving the year in Q4 on leverage.

Got it. Super helpful. Thanks, Amy.

Thanks, Karl. Joe, next question, please.

Our next question comes from the line of Brad Zelnick with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed.

Great. Thanks very much. Amy, I wanted to ask about the expense actions that you announced last week. Obviously, not a decision that you would take lightly.

How are you thinking about headcount for the remainder of the year and the possibility for further expense actions, if necessary? And what criteria do you consider in making these decisions? Thanks.

Brad, listen, thanks for that question. Obviously, as we think about the Q4 guidance around low single-digit operating expense growth, we start to, as you know, sort of lap certain real acceleration points that we had last year. And we lapped the acquisitions both of Nuance and of Xandr. So, by the time that we get to the end of Q4, you'll see very moderated headcount growth on a year-over-year basis in addition to some the prioritization decisions we've made.

And you're right. We take decisions like the one we had to make to get our cost structure more in line with revenue just incredibly seriously because we have lots of very talented people who were impacted by that. And so, I do think that we feel confident in that exit rate. As I said, it will certainly imply that year-over-year growth as we lap some of the investments that we've made will be quite small.

Thanks for the color.

Thanks, Brad. Joe, next question, please.

Our next question comes from the line of Brad Reback with Stifel. Please proceed.

Great. Thanks very much. On Office 365 Commercial, with you guys approaching 400 million seats and the E5 business really starting to accelerate here on that consolidated sort of expense ROI that you're putting forth, should we think about the growth there more evenly balanced between seats and ARPU going forward or still to continue to favor seats? Thanks.

Yes. That's a good question, especially because this quarter, you started to see a little bit more of that ARPU influence. And as you might have gathered from your question and I'll just reinforce it, as we see some of this moderating seat growth, whether that's some of the new SKU weakness that we had talked about, some of the stand-alone stuff, you're starting to also see E5 ARPU happen at the same time. So, it does create some stability in that Office 365 Commercial revenue number.

So, we're seeing still good seat growth, still growth across all workloads. And as you're pointing out, we're getting further into the E5 health, where we've seen, I want to say, four or five really good quarters of E5 adoption. The value there is just very high for customers in this environment between analytics, security, and I think we've given some, I think, good security data points in terms of adoption and voice. This is a place where customers can save money by moving to this suite.

And I do think you're starting to see some of that ARPU help.

And we're also investing in outside of Microsoft 365 in other per-user workloads. We were a new suite Power Platform on its own and even stand-alone offers like even Teams Pro and what have you. So, there's a significant amount of work we want to do besides sort of the suites that we all sort of have at scale.

Great. Thank you very much.

Joe, we have time for one last question.

Our next question comes from the line of Tyler Radke with Citi. Please proceed.

Yes. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to ask just about how your visibility has changed in terms of some of the larger Azure customer ramps. Could you just comment on, to the extent those large customer ramps or if any of those projects are getting put on pause? And then is there any way to just kind of quantify the AI potential contribution or maybe GPU-powered contribution that Azure that you're expecting over the coming quarters? Thank you.

On the second piece, I think it's too early to sort of start somehow separating out AI from the rest of the workload. I mean, even the workloads themselves, AI is just going to be a core part of a workload in Azure versus just AI alone. So, in other words, if you have an application that's using a bunch of inference, let's say, it's also going to have a bunch of storage, and it's going to have a bunch of other compute beyond GPU inferencing, if you will. So, I think over time, obviously, I think every app is going to be an AI app.

Ladies and gentlemen, please stand by.

That wraps up the Q&A portion of today's earnings call. Thank you for joining us today, and we look forward to speaking with all of you soon.

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Credit: https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2023/01/24/microsoft-msft-q2-2023-earnings-call-transcript/

Igbo leaders discuss Nnamdi Kanu, insecurity in South-east, proffer solutions

The Council of Elders of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Worldwide, has says it is planning to organise a peace summit to discuss ways of addressing insecurity in the country and the South-east especially.

The council said this in a communiqué issued by its Chairperson, Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, on Friday in Abuja at the end of its meeting.

The council called on the Federal Government to release Nnamdi Kanu, the detained leader of the proscribed IPOB unconditionally.

“The council took a decision on the need to have a peace summit. It goes with the desire that Nnamdi Kanu should be released.

“We want to dialogue with his participation in order to have an enduring peace in Nigeria, particularly in the South-east.

“The council therefore called on the Federal Government and all persons concerned to release Nnamdi Kanu unconditionally. He cannot be in prison while such a crucial summit is being held,” Mr Iwuanyanwu said.

He added that the security situation in the country called for concern, saying that the council was particularly worried how the situation had worsened in the South-east.

Mr Iwuanyanwu noted that lives were being lost, innocent blood shed, while properties and government institutions were being destroyed.

“Moreover both the State and Federal Government are deploying huge financial resources in fighting a meaningless war instead of providing infrastructure, education and healthcare.

“Council of Elders of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Worldwide has therefore insisted that enough is enough.

“We must have a peace summit where we will get all the stakeholders including the agitators and youths together to chart a new course that can enthrone enduring peace,” he said.

He expressed concern that most people in the region were unemployed including graduates, adding that any government policy on employment without first ensuring security of the nation would amount to nothing.

He added that the council as part of its efforts in curbing unemployment had agreed to tackle the problem in the moribund Niger Cement Company.

Mr Iwuanyanwu said the company had the capacity to address to a large extent the unemployment in the South-east.

“An Okwesilieze Nwodo-led committee has been set up to mediate between the landlord which is the Ebonyi State Government and the investors to ensure a possible reactivation of the factory in 2023.

“We have also decided to revisit coal-mining activities in the zone. We are encouraging our business leaders to exploit the possibility of reactivating the Coal Mining. This will create jobs and also increase the nation’s GDP.

“On the area of culture, the council has also agreed to approach the State Governments to reactivate cultural and school competitions within the states with inter-state finals holding at Enugu,” he said.

He said the council was also in touch with a lot of African-Americans in the United States who wanted to reconnect with their roots.

The council agreed to discuss with state governors in the region to provide a village for their resettlement because they were prepared to come over to develop the region, he said.

On the secession of Ndigbo, Mr Iwuanyanwu said: “We have noticed with dismay that people still use the threat of secession against the interest of the zone. The Igbos have invested in virtually every locality in Nigeria in areas of business, services, and building properties.

“So the talk of secession is peddled without honesty. However, Ndigbo is only interested in fairness and equity. When a government or group denies us opportunities which are ours, including political and employment opportunities, we cannot be happy,” he said.

Mr Iwuanyanwu formally announced, according to the tradition and custom of Ndigbo, the passage of George Obiozor, the president general of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Worldwide.

“Today marks the beginning of the formal mourning by the Council of Elders of Ohanaeze Ndigbo.

“This council will set up a strong delegation including top government officials who are members, captains of industries. Our members who are in the academia, religious and traditional institutions amongst others will represent us in the burial,” he said.

He said the council also deliberated on the death and funeral of its leader Mbazulike Amechi, saying he ensured that peace returned to the country and Igbo land in particular.

The meeting was attended by Okwesilieze Nwodo, Achike Udenwa, Tim Menakaya, Ben Obi, Cletus Ilomuanya, Kema Chikwe, Eddy Onuoha and Julius Ucha among others.

Source Credit: https://www.premiumtimesng.com/regional/ssouth-east/576950-igbo-leaders-discuss-nnamdi-kanu-insecurity-in-south-east-proffer-solutions.html

Buhari’s last new year message as president

President Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retired)'s New Year's address for the year 2023, which happens to be his last as president.

Read the full text below:

My compatriots and compatriots, I wish you a very happy and prosperous New Year.

First, I would like to thank and honor the Almighty who helped us through the year 2022 and has given us a chance to see another year. Each New Year is an opportunity to reflect on the past year, reposition yourself, and move on with the New.

2. As we celebrate the chance to be alive in the year 2023, we must also acknowledge the passing of our brothers and sisters who did not make it to this new year. May their souls rest in perfect peace.

3. This year is particularly important to me because this message is essentially a farewell. After having the honor of serving you, my countrymen, for more than seven years, my term as your President in the most revered tradition of our ongoing and maturing democracy must necessarily come to an end. In the next five months, we would have gone to the polls and elected a new president along with new governors and a plethora of other elected officials at both the national and state levels.

4. All of these electoral and democratic principles work together because of the transcendent beliefs, beyond partisan politics, of you, the great citizen of Nigeria. Furthermore, my personal commitment and executive pledge is to ensure that the 2023 elections, which are diligently conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission, are free and fair. The collective electoral will and the votes of Nigerians will be fulfilled, even in the twilight moments of my turn.

5. Reflecting on the year 2022 allows us as a government to examine our legacy of successes and challenges. As we celebrate our victories and review the obstacles, we must all understand that governance is a continuum, which still places a transitional responsibility on this administration to provide the incoming government with an unbiased and objective roadmap to 2023. We as Nigeria; a country united under the will of God and actively growing as one indivisible entity, they have been trained year after year, decade after decade, to weather all stormy waters and emerge stronger and better where others have fallen and disintegrated. This has made us a unique nation throughout the world and on our continent.

6. In the year 2023, Nigerians go to the polls to exercise our right to vote and elect a new Administration; It is an important year for our country to ensure that we have another smooth transition of government, to whomever the people have decided. This administration's historic Election Amendment Act will ensure that we have free and fair elections across the country. We as Nigerians must also take responsibility to ensure that we participate in ensuring that the 2023 elections are free and fair by not engaging in anti-state activities and other nefarious acts that may affect the conduct of the polls. We must also resist any attempt to be used by politicians to riot in any way to disrupt elections. We as a government will ensure that such activities are carried out to the full force of the law.

7. As our law enforcement agencies continue to make the country proud, we must continue to help our patriotic forces by providing much-needed community intelligence. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that Nigeria remains safe and peaceful for all of us. Therefore, we have a duty and an obligation to support our troops and intelligence agencies by being vigilant and reporting anything suspicious. The fight against the insurgency in the northeast region has continuously recorded very clear victories in the past year. The federal government and the Borno state government have begun the return journey of internally displaced persons to their ancestral homes previously occupied by insurgents. Furthermore, more than 82,000 insurgents with their families have surrendered to the Nigerian army. The rehabilitation program (Operation Safe Corridor) is currently processing several insurgents who have surrendered. The fight against banditry, kidnapping and other crimes in the Northwest and other regions is gaining momentum and showing very clear results. One of which is the resumption of train service along the Kaduna corridor to Abuja.

8. After #EndSARS, our administration heeded and instituted the ongoing Police Reform program based on a new Presidential Vision for Police in Nigeria. This new vision is framed in a clear roadmap that transcends the mandate of this administration and is based on six principles: a) Building trust and legitimacy b) Leadership, accountability and supervision c) Technology and digital media d ) Community Policing and Crime Reduction e) Training and Education of Officers f) Financing, Welfare, Welfare and Security of Officers.

9. This reform program is in its founding phase, but it has registered notable successes in improving police welfare and pay. Other achievements have been the ongoing training of 500 police cadet instructors to enable a better training regime for the first batch of 10,000 new cadets in 2022 with a further batch of 10,000 by 2023. In support of these reforms has been the sourcing new material for the Nigerian Police must constantly improve its constitutional responsibility to enforce law and order, protect life and property, and peace and security on the streets.

10. Despite the current global economic crisis, we have been able to weather the storms. Inflation around the world is at an all time high, the Federal Government has been determined through its economic interventions to stay afloat during this period. 2022 brought a combined impact of ongoing wars and COVID-19 side effects. Despite creating its own fiscal challenges, we have continued to subsidize our energy costs to protect households from the inflationary pressure of high energy costs. In 2023, we are focused on building on our Gross Domestic Product and sustaining the huge increase in non-oil GDP growth.

11. The Nigerian Start-up Bill has been passed into law. This is considered a big step in reducing our unemployment numbers by boosting job creation and supporting the entrepreneurial drive of our youth. If you remember, in my 2021 New Year's speech, I mentioned the need to secure the future of our youth by recognizing that our youth are our most valuable natural resource, at home and abroad. In this sense, we work with the legislature to develop a law that allows turning their passions into ideas that can be supported, prepared and scaled in all regions. 2023 will see the implementation of the Nigerian Start-up Act across the country.

12. The year 2023 would indeed be a time when we would work to solidify ourselves in delivering key strategic priorities under our "SEA" Agenda - (Security, Economy and Anti-Corruption). Some of the key priority areas where we would direct our attention and strengths include:

a. Focus on SAFETY; We will continue to engage, push back, and dismantle the operations of internal and external criminal groups and extremists waging war against our communities across the country. We will also focus on ensuring that free and fair elections are held in February 2023. Our security forces are working together to ensure that the victories we have won in the war against insurgency, banditry, secession and other crimes are upheld. and get more victories.

b. For the ECONOMY; our approach would be to maintain and build economic growth through the national economic diversification agenda that supports the goal of national food self-sufficiency and growth in non-oil sources. The ongoing infrastructure revolution by our administration will see us deliver key projects across the country in power, rail, highway, ports, and technology.

C. ANTI-CORRUPTION: In our administration's anti-corruption campaign, we have created new records in this fight, going from 117 convictions in 2017 to 3,615 convictions in December 2022. We, as a government, are committed to ridding our nation in every way . of corruption, through collaboration with all branches of the Government to effectively carry out this fight.

13. As we welcome the New Year, let us look with hope to 2023, the year to move as a nation towards unity, progress and prosperity. I offer my own personal congratulations, taking into account the varying opinions and interpretations of our executive legacies. I welcome and accept both praise and criticism in equal measure, confident that I did my best to serve our beloved country Nigeria and I pray that the next president will also take up the slack and continue the race to make Nigeria one of major countries in the world at the end of this century.

14. Long live the Nigerian spirit of oneness, togetherness and unity. Long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria. A happy and prosperous new year.

God bless you.

This year is particularly important to me, says Buhari, in the New Year’s message.

President Muhammadu Buhari He has said that the collective will and votes of Nigerians will be fulfilled in 2023.

The president made the statement in his New Year's message to Nigerians, which was made available on Saturday.

Read the full statement below:

NEW YEAR 2023 MESSAGE FROM PRESIDENT BUHARI

My compatriots and compatriots.

A very happy and prosperous new year to you.

First, I would like to thank and honor the Almighty who helped us through the year 2022 and has given us a chance to see another year. Each New Year is an opportunity to reflect on the past year, reposition yourself, and move on with the New.

As we celebrate the chance to be alive in the year 2023, we must also acknowledge the passing of our brothers and sisters who did not make it to this new year. May their souls rest in perfect peace.

This year is particularly important to me because this message is essentially a farewell. After having the honor of serving you, my countrymen, for more than seven years, my term as your President in the most revered tradition of our ongoing and maturing democracy must necessarily come to an end. In the next five months we would have gone to the polls and elected a new president along with new governors and a plethora of other elected officials at both the national and state levels.

All of these electoral and democratic principles are working together because of the transcendent beliefs, beyond partisan politics, of you, the great citizen of Nigeria. In addition, my personal commitment and executive promise to ensure that the 2023 elections, which are diligently conducted by INEC, are free and fair. The collective electoral will and the votes of Nigerians will be fulfilled, even in the twilight moments of my turn.

Reflecting on the year 2022 allows us as a government to examine our legacy of successes and challenges. As we celebrate our victories and review the obstacles, we must all understand that governance is a continuum, which still places a transitional responsibility on this administration to provide the incoming government with an unbiased and objective roadmap to 2023. We as Nigeria; a country united under the will of God and actively growing as one indivisible entity, they have been trained year after year, decade after decade, to weather all stormy waters and emerge stronger and better where others have fallen and disintegrated. This has made us a unique nation throughout the world and on our continent.

In the year 2023 Nigerians go to the polls to exercise our right to vote and elect a new administration, it is an important year for our country to ensure we have another smooth transition of government, to whoever the people have decided. This administration's historic Election Amendment Act will ensure that we have free and fair elections across the country. We as Nigerians must also take responsibility to ensure that we participate in ensuring that the 2023 elections are free and fair by not engaging in anti-state activities and other nefarious acts that may affect the conduct of the polls. We must also resist any attempt to be used by politicians to riot in any way to disrupt elections. We as a government will ensure that such activities are carried out to the full force of the law.

As our law enforcement agencies continue to make the country proud, we must continue to help our patriotic forces by providing much-needed community intelligence. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that Nigeria remains safe and peaceful for all of us.

Therefore, we have a duty and an obligation to support our troops and intelligence agencies by being vigilant and reporting anything suspicious. The fight against the insurgency in the Northeast region has continuously registered very clear victories in the last year. The federal government and the Borno state government have begun the return journey of internally displaced persons to their ancestral homes previously occupied by insurgents. Furthermore, more than 82,000 insurgents with their families have surrendered to the Nigerian army. The rehabilitation program (Operation Safe Corridor) is currently processing several surrendered insurgents. The fight against banditry, kidnapping and other crimes in the Northwest and other regions is gaining momentum and showing very clear results. One of which is the resumption of train service along the Kaduna corridor to Abuja.

In the aftermath of the EndSars, our administration heeded and instituted the ongoing Police Reform program based on a new Presidential Vision for Police in Nigeria. This new vision is framed in a clear roadmap that transcends the mandate of this administration and is based on six principles: a) Building trust and legitimacy b) Leadership, accountability and supervision c) Technology and digital media d ) Community Policing and Crime Reduction e) Training and Education of Officers f) Financing, Welfare, Welfare and Security of Officers.

This reform program is largely in its foundational phase, but it has recorded notable successes in improving police welfare and pay. Other achievements have been the ongoing training of 500 police cadet instructors to enable a better training regime for the first batch of 10,000 new cadets in 2022 with a further batch of 10,000 by 2023. In support of these reforms has been the sourcing new material for the Nigerian Police must constantly improve its constitutional responsibility to enforce law and order, protect life and property, and peace and security on the streets.

Despite the current global economic crisis, we have been able to weather the storms. Inflation around the world is at an all time high, the Federal Government has been determined through its economic interventions to stay afloat during this period. 2022 brought a combined impact of ongoing wars and COVID-19 side effects. Despite creating its own fiscal challenges, we have continued to subsidize our energy costs to protect households from the inflationary pressure of high energy costs. In 2023, we are focused on building on our GDP and sustaining the huge increase in non-oil GDP growth.

Nigeria's Start-up Bill has been passed into law. This is considered a big step in reducing our unemployment numbers by boosting job creation and supporting the entrepreneurial drive of our youth. If you remember, in my 2021 New Year's speech, I mentioned the need to secure the future of our youth by recognizing that our youth are our most valuable natural resource, at home and abroad. In this sense, we work with the legislature to develop a law that allows turning their passions into ideas that can be supported, prepared and scaled in all regions. 2023 will see the implementation of the Nigerian Start-up Act across the country.

The year 2023 would indeed be a time when we would work to solidify ourselves in delivering key strategic priorities under our "SEA" Agenda (Security, Economy and Anti-Corruption). Some of the key priority areas where we would direct our attention and strengths include:

a. Focus on SAFETY; We will continue to engage, push back, and dismantle the operations of internal and external criminal groups and extremists waging war against our communities across the country. We will also focus on ensuring that free and fair elections are held in February 2023. Our security forces are working together to ensure that the victories we have won in the war against insurgency, banditry, secession and other crimes are upheld. and get more victories.

b. for the ECONOMY; our approach would be to maintain and build economic growth through the national economic diversification agenda that supports the goal of national food self-sufficiency and growth in non-oil sources. The ongoing infrastructure revolution by our administration will see us deliver key projects across the country in power, rail, highway, ports, and technology.

c. ANTI CORRUPTION: In our administration's anti-corruption campaign, we have created new records in this fight, going from 117 convictions in 2017 to 3,615 convictions in December 2022. We, as a government, are committed to ridding our nation of all forms of corruption. through collaboration with all branches of the Government to effectively carry out this fight.

As we receive the New Year, let us look with hope to 2023, the year to move as a Nation towards unity, progress and prosperity. I offer my own personal congratulations, taking into account the varying opinions and interpretations of our executive legacies. I welcome and accept both praise and criticism in equal measure, confident that I did my best to serve our beloved country Nigeria and I pray that the next president will also take up the slack and continue the race to make Nigeria one of major countries in the world at the end of this century.

Long live the Nigerian spirit of oneness, togetherness and unity. Long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria. A happy and prosperous new year.

God bless you.

Muhammadu Buhari