Tidbits From Microsoft's Q2 Conference Call

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) which earlier Wednesday beat fiscal first-quarter expectations, told analysts to expect an 11 percent sequential increase in operating expense in its fiscal second quarter, along with growing revenue.

Wall Street expects fiscal second-quarter earnings of $0.75 a share, down 4 percent from a year ago, on $27.87 billion in revenue.

In a conference call with analysts Microsoft executives said they expect fiscal second-quarter operating expense will hit between $8.6 billion and $8.8 billion, up from $7.94 billion in the first quarter.

Other tidbits from the call:

•Commercial license revenue will increase to $10.8 billion and $11 billion, up from $9.87 billion in the recent quarter.

•Microsoft expects revenue in the category of "other commercial" to gain slightly, to between $2.5 billion and $2.6 billion, up from $2.4 billion in the recent period.

•The company is "confident Surface 3 sales will continue to grow. It said Surface Pro 3 momentum drove total Surface revenue of $908 million in the recent period.

•The company also forecast phone hardware revenues of between $2 billion and $2.4 billion, down from the more than $2.6 billion reported for the first fiscal quarter.

•Microsoft expects second-quarter computing and gaming hardware revenue to rise to between $3.5 billion and $3.8 billion, from $2.45 billion in the second quarter.

•Consumer licensing revenue will drop to between $4 billion and $4.2 billion, from $4.09 billion in the second quarter.