Microsoft said Wednesday that its revenue hit 30.6 billion U.S. dollars in the third quarter ending on March 31, 2019, up 14 percent from the same period last year.

The company generated quarterly net profits of 8.8 billion dollars, an increase of 18 percent year on year, while diluted earnings per share went up 20 percent to reach 1.14 dollars, Microsoft said in its Q3 2019 fiscal year report.

The Redmond, Washington-based company attributed the Q3 financial results, which beat Wall Street expectations, to the strong performance of its cloud business Azure.

"Demand for our cloud offerings drove commercial cloud revenue to 9.6 billion dollars this quarter, up 41 percent year-over-year," said Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said his company is accelerating innovation across the cloud and the edge to help Microsoft customers build the digital capability required for further growth.

Microsoft's intelligent-cloud unit recorded the biggest growth of the quarter, up some 22 percent from the same period of 2018.

Meanwhile, Microsoft yielded 10.2 billion dollars from Productivity and Business Processes, including its Office 365 commercial suites, up 12 percent over the same period of 2018. Revenue from LinkedIn service rose by 27 percent.

Earnings for personal computer business increased by 8 percent to generate 10.7 billion dollars, with Windows OEM revenue contributing 9 percent, said Microsoft.

Microsoft shares picked up in after-hours trading Wednesday, briefly pushing the market cap over 1 trillion dollars, making Microsoft the third U.S. high-tech firm to hit that mark, trailing behind Apple and Amazon.