IBM released its full-year results yesterday and the lone ray of sunshine beaming on the 104-year-old company emerged from behind a cloud. Although total revenues declined 12%, CEO Ginni Rometty preferred to focus on the future, noting that “strategic imperatives” in the areas of cloud, analytics, mobile, social, and security grew 17% to $29 billion, accounting for 35% of overall business.
“We strengthened our existing portfolio while investing aggressively in new opportunities like Watson Health, Watson Internet of Things, and hybrid cloud,” Rometty said in a earnings release yesterday. “As we transform to a cognitive solutions and cloud platform company, we are well positioned to continue delivering greater value to our clients and returning capital to our shareholders.”
IBM revenues for the year fell off by $11 billion to $81.7 billion and gross profits fell 12% to $40.6 billion. Revenues for Q4 declined 8.5%
For the full year, total cloud revenues increased 43% to $10.2 billion. Some $4.5 billion of that was for for cloud delivered as a service, which increased by 50%. Sales of business analytics services increased 7% to $17.9 billion and mobile business more than tripled.
