Thank you, Satya, and good afternoon, everyone. Our third quarter revenue was $52.9 billion, up 7% and 10% in constant currency. Earnings per share was $2.45 and increased 10% and 14% in constant currency. Our results exceeded expectations, driven by focused execution from our sales teams and partners. In our commercial business, revenue was up 19% in constant currency. We saw better-than-expected renewal strength, including across Microsoft 365, which also benefited Windows Commercial given the higher in-period revenue recognition. In Office 365 stand-alone products, we saw improvement in new business growth, while growth trends in EMS and Windows Commercial standalone products remained consistent with Q2. In Azure, customers continued to exercise some caution as optimization and new workload trends from the prior quarter continued as expected. In our consumer business, PC demand was a bit better than we expected, particularly in the commercial segment, which benefited Windows OEM and Surface even as channel inventory levels remain elevated, which negatively impacted results. Advertising spend landed in line with our expectations. We have seen share gains in Azure, Dynamics, Teams, Security, Edge and Bing as we continue to focus on delivering high value as well as new innovative solutions to our customers, including next-generation AI capabilities. Commercial bookings increased 11% and 12% in constant currency on a strong prior year comparable with a declining expiry base and 3 points of unfavorable impact from the inclusion of Nuance in the prior year. The better-than-expected result was driven by strong execution across our renewal sales motions mentioned earlier. Commercial remaining performance obligation increased 26% to $196 billion. Roughly 45% will be recognized in revenue in the next 12 months, up 18% year-over-year. The remaining portion, which will be recognized beyond the next 12 months increased 34%. And this quarter, our annuity mix was again 96%. FX impact on total company revenue, segment level revenue and operating expense growth was as expected. FX decreased COGS growth by 2 points, 1 point favorable to expectations. Microsoft Cloud revenue was $28.5 billion and grew 22% and 25% in constant currency, slightly ahead of expectations.
Microsoft Cloud gross margin percentage increased roughly 2 points year-over-year to 72%, a point ahead of expectations driven by cloud engineering efficiencies. Excluding the impact of the change in accounting estimate for useful lives, Microsoft Cloud gross margin percentage decreased slightly, driven by lower Azure margin. Company gross margin dollars increased 9% and 13% in constant currency, including 2 points due to the change in accounting estimate. Gross margin percentage increased year-over-year to 69%. Excluding the impact of the change in accounting estimate, gross margin percentage decreased slightly, driven by a lower mix of OEM revenue.
Operating expense increased 7% and 9% in constant currency, about $300 million lower than expected. Operating expense growth was driven by roughly 2 points from the Nuance and Xandr acquisitions as well as investments in cloud engineering and LinkedIn. At a total company level, head count at the end of March was 9% higher than a year ago. Operating income increased 10% and 15% in constant currency, including 4 points due to the change in accounting estimate. Operating margins increased roughly 1 point year-over-year to 42%. Excluding the impact of the change in accounting estimate, operating margins decreased slightly and increased slightly in constant currency.
Now to our segment results. Revenue from Productivity and Business Processes was $17.5 billion and grew 11% and 15% in constant currency, ahead of expectations, primarily driven by better-than-expected results in Office commercial. Office commercial revenue grew 13% and 17% in constant currency. Office 365 commercial revenue increased 14% and 18% in constant currency, slightly better than expected with the strong renewal execution mentioned earlier and E5 momentum. Paid Office 365 commercial seats grew 11% year-over-year to over 382 million, with installed base expansion across all workloads and customer segments. Seat growth was again driven by our small and medium business and frontline worker offerings. Office commercial licensing declined 1% and increased 5% in constant currency, better than expected with 11 points of benefit from transactional strength in Japan. Office consumer revenue increased 1% and 4% in constant currency with continued momentum in Microsoft 365 subscriptions, which grew 12% to 65.4 million. LinkedIn revenue increased 8% and 10% in constant currency, driven by growth in Talent Solutions. Dynamics revenue grew 17% and 21% in constant currency, driven by Dynamics 365, which grew 25% and 29% in constant currency, with healthy growth across all workloads. Segment gross margin dollars increased 14% and 18% in constant currency, and gross margin percentage increased roughly 2 points year-over-year. Excluding the impact of the change in accounting estimate, gross margin percentage increased slightly, driven by improvements in Office 365, partially offset by sales mix shift to cloud offerings. Operating expenses increased 4% and 5% in constant currency, and operating income increased 20% and 27% in constant currency, including 4 points due to the change in accounting estimate. Next, the Intelligent Cloud segment. Revenue was $22.1 billion, increasing 16% and 19% in constant currency, slightly ahead of expectations. Overall, server products and cloud services revenue increased 17% and 21% in constant currency. Azure and other cloud services revenue grew 27% and 31% in constant currency. In our per user business, enterprise mobility and security installed base grew 15% to nearly 250 million seats. In our on-premises server business, revenue decreased 2% and was relatively unchanged in constant currency with continued demand for our hybrid offerings, including Windows Server and SQL Server running in multi-cloud environments, offset by transactional licensing. Enterprise Services revenue grew 6% and 9% in constant currency with better-than-expected performance across Enterprise Support Services and Microsoft Consulting Services.
Segment gross margin dollars increased 15% and 18% in constant currency and gross margin percentage decreased slightly. Excluding the impact of the change in accounting estimate, gross margin percentage declined roughly 3 points, driven by sales mix shift to Azure and the lower Azure margin noted earlier. Operating expenses increased 19% and 20% in constant currency, including roughly 3 points of impact from the Nuance acquisition. Operating income grew 13% and 17% in constant currency, with roughly 6 points from the change in accounting estimate. Now to More Personal Computing.
Revenue was $13.3 billion, decreasing 9% and 7% in constant currency with better-than-expected results across all businesses. Windows OEM revenue decreased 28% year-over-year and Devices revenue decreased 30% and 26% in constant currency, both ahead of expectations. We saw better-than-expected PC demand, as noted earlier, particularly in the commercial segment, which has higher revenue per license, although results continue to be negatively impacted by elevated channel inventory levels. Windows commercial products and cloud services revenue increased 14% and 18% in constant currency, significantly ahead of expectations, primarily due to the strong renewal execution with higher in-period revenue recognition noted earlier. Search and news advertising revenue ex TAC increased 10% and 13% in constant currency, including 2 points from the Xandr acquisition. Results were driven by higher search volume with share gains again this quarter for our Edge browser globally and Bing in the U.S. And in Gaming, revenue declined 4% and 1% in constant currency, ahead of expectations. Xbox hardware revenue declined 30% and 28% in constant currency on a high prior year comparable that benefited from increased console supply. Xbox content and services revenue increased 3% and 5% in constant currency, driven by better-than-expected monetization in third-party and first-party content and growth in Xbox Game Pass. Segment gross margin dollars declined 9% and 5% in constant currency, and gross margin percentage increased slightly year-over-year. Operating expenses declined 5% and 3% in constant currency, even with 3 points of growth from the Xandr acquisition. Operating income decreased 12% and 7% in constant currency.
Now back to total company results. Capital expenditures, including finance leases were $7.8 billion to support cloud demand. Cash paid for PP&E was $6.6 billion. Cash flow from operations was $24.4 billion, down 4% year-over-year as strong cloud billings and collections as well as lower supplier payments were more than offset by a tax payment related to the R&D capitalization provisions and employee payments primarily related to headcount growth and an increase in employee compensation. Free cash flow was $17.8 billion, down 11% year-over-year. Excluding the impact of this tax payment, cash flow from operations increased 1% and free cash flow declined 5%. This quarter, other income and expense was $321 million, higher than anticipated, driven by net gains on foreign currency remeasurement. 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 Q4 outlook, which unless specifically noted otherwise, is on a U.S. dollar basis.
My commentary for the next quarter and FY '24 does not include any impact from Activision, which we continue to work towards closing in fiscal year 2023, subject to obtaining required regulatory approvals. Now to FX. Based on current rates, we expect FX to decrease total revenue growth by approximately 2 points with no impact to COGS or operating expense growth. Within segments, we anticipate roughly 2 points of negative FX impact on revenue growth in Productivity and Business Processes and Intelligent Cloud and roughly 1 point in More Personal Computing. Overall, our outlook has many of the trends we saw in Q3 continue through Q4. In our largest quarter of the year, we expect customer demand for our differentiated solutions, including our AI platform and consistent execution across the Microsoft Cloud to drive another quarter of healthy revenue growth. Last year, we had our largest commercial bookings quarter ever with a material volume of large multiyear commitments. On that comparable, we expect growth to be relatively flat. We expect consistent execution across our core annuity sales motions with strong renewals and continued commitment to our platform as we focus on meeting customers' changing contract needs, which include shorter term, quick time to value contracts in this dynamic environment. Our key focus remains on delivering customer value. Microsoft Cloud gross margin percentage should be up roughly 2 points year-over-year, driven by the accounting estimate change noted earlier. Excluding that impact, Q4 cloud gross margin percentage will be relatively flat as improvements in Office 365 will offset the lower Azure margin and the impact of scaling our AI infrastructure to meet growing demand. We expect capital expenditures to have a material sequential increase on a dollar basis, driven by investments in Azure AI infrastructure. Reminder there can be normal quarterly spend variability in the timing of our cloud infrastructure build-out. Next, to segment guidance. In Productivity and Business Processes, we expect revenue to grow between 10% and 12% in constant currency or $17.9 billion to $18.2 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 roughly 16% in constant currency. In our on-premises business, we expect revenue to decline in the low 30s. In Office consumer, we expect revenue growth in the mid-single digits, driven by Microsoft 365 subscriptions. For LinkedIn, we expect mid-single digit revenue growth driven by Talent Solutions with continued strong engagement on the platform. And in Dynamics, we expect revenue growth in the mid- to high teens, driven by continued growth in Dynamics 365. For Intelligent Cloud, we expect revenue to grow between 15% and 16% in constant currency or $23.6 billion to $23.9 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, we expect revenue growth to be 26% to 27% in constant currency, including roughly 1 point from AI services. Growth continues to be driven by our Azure consumption business, and we expect the trends from Q3 to continue into Q4, as noted earlier. Our per-user business should continue to benefit from Microsoft 365 suite momentum, though we expect continued moderation in growth rates given the size of the installed base. In our on-premises server business, we expect revenue to decline low single digits as demand for our hybrid solutions, including Windows Server and SQL Server running in multi-cloud environments, will be more than offset by unfavorable FX impact. And in Enterprise Services, revenue should be relatively unchanged year-over-year as growth in Enterprise Support Services will be offset by a decline in Microsoft Consulting Services. In More Personal Computing, we expect revenue of $13.35 billion to $13.75 billion. PC demand should be similar to Q3, and given channel inventory still remains elevated, our revenue will lag overall market growth as it continues to normalize. Therefore, Windows OEM and Devices revenue should both decline in the low to mid-20s. In Windows commercial products and cloud services revenue should decline low to mid-single digits. While we expect healthy annuity billings growth driven by continued customer demand for Microsoft 365 and our advanced security solutions, a reminder that our quarterly revenue growth can have variability, primarily from in-period revenue recognition depending on the mix of contracts. Search and news advertising ex TAC revenue growth should be approximately 10%, roughly 5 points higher than the overall search and news advertising revenue, driven by growth in first-party revenue is similar to Q3. And in Gaming, we expect revenue growth in the mid- to high single digits. We expect Xbox content services revenue growth in the low to mid-teens, driven by third-party and first-party content as well as Xbox Game Pass. Now back to company guidance.
We expect COGS to grow between 3% and 4% in constant currency or $16.8 billion to $17 billion and operating expense to grow approximately 2% in constant currency or $15.1 billion to $15.2 billion. Other income and expense should be roughly $300 million as interest income is expected to more than offset interest expense. As a reminder, we are required to recognize mark-to-market gains or losses on our equity portfolio, which can increase quarterly volatility. We expect our Q4 effective tax rate to be in line with our full year rate of approximately 19%. And finally, as a reminder, for Q4 cash flow, we expect to make a $1.3 billion cash tax payment related to the R&D capitalization provision. Now I'd like to share some closing thoughts as we look to the next fiscal year. With our leadership position as we begin this AI era, we remain focused on strategically managing the company to deliver differentiated customer value as well as long-term financial growth and profitability. As with any significant platform shift, it starts with innovation. And we are excited about the early feedback and demand signals for the AI capabilities we have announced to date. We will continue to invest in our cloud infrastructure, particularly AI-related spend as we scale with the growing demand, driven by customer transformation. And we expect the resulting revenue to grow over time. As always, we remain committed to aligning cost and revenue growth to deliver disciplined profitability. Therefore, while the scaled CapEx investments will impact COGS growth, we expect FY '24 operating expense growth to remain low. As a team, we have continually focused on pivoting our resources aggressively to the future as we execute at a high level in the moment to deliver value to our customers. That balance has enabled the company to successfully lead across a number of platform shifts over a number of decades. Therefore, we are committed to leading the AI platform wave and making the investments to support it. With that, let's go to Q&A. Brett?