How come MS announces their Q3 earnings (2022) at the same time Google announces their Q1 (2023) earnings. That's a six month difference, how does that work?
Some companies name their quarters based on the calendar year that the fiscal year starts in, some do it based on when fiscal year ends.
It probably matters to people in finance, but I'm not sure it matters to anyone else.
I'm not totally sure if this actually makes sense and is net positive for the business. But this is the reasoning I've heard from sales people for wanting to offset quarter schedules.
A lot of sales and cash flow events are seasonal in nature. Sales for a company may slow down during the summer and may pick up in the winter.
For example, a school year tends to run Sep - May, so any business that services the academic industry would probably also want to set their fiscal calendar to July thru June, so that sales, cash flow and income aligns with the actual sales cycle, rather than split their income statement across two academic years if they went with Jan thru December.
Just one of many examples. Another company might make most of their sales towards the end of the year but since customers buy on credit they might not receive the cash flow until Jan, Feb, or March (under a net 90 invoicing scheme). So they may choose to then have Jan-Mar be their Q4 so they can collect on that revenue to influence their EOY balance sheet, and to give them more of a buffer to cover EOY taxes.
> A fiscal year is a one-year period that companies and governments use for financial reporting and budgeting. A fiscal year is most commonly used for accounting purposes to prepare financial statements. Although a fiscal year can start on Jan. 1 and end on Dec. 31, not all fiscal years correspond with the calendar year. [1] [2]
Microsoft is just using a different year definition.