International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) shares rose 0.06% to $159.86 and onto $161.55 in after-hours trading after the company reported its quarterly earnings data. The company has a market cap of $153.06 billion at 959.96 million shares outstanding. Shares have been trading in a 52-week range of $116.90 to $173.78.
International Business Machines or IBM is a technology company that operates in five segments. Its Global Technology Services segment offers services, including strategic outsourcing, integrated technology services, cloud and technology support services. Its Global Businesses Services segment provides consulting and systems integration, application management services and process services while its software segment consists primarily of middleware and operating systems software. Lastly, its systems hardware segment provides clients with infrastructure technologies and its global financing segment includes client financing, commercial financing, and remanufacturing and remarketing.
In its quarterly earnings report, the company reported that profits stood at $2.84 billion, down from the year-ago profit at $3.79 billion. Earnings per share came in at $2.95 versus analysts’ expectations at $2.89. In addition, the company reported 30% growth in cloud revenues, along with 12% growth in its strategic imperatives namely cloud, mobile, social, security and Watson and analytics.
IBM continues to establish itself as the leading cognitive solutions and cloud platform company,” Rometty said in a statement. “In doing so, IBM is pioneering new business opportunities beyond the traditional workplace.”
According to International Business Machines CEO Ginni Rometty, the strategic imperatives components comprise around 38% of the company’s overall revenue and the future of its business. She also shared that the company made 11 acquisitions so far this year for a combined total of $5 billion.
The latest earnings figures mark the third quarter that IBM beat market expectations but it also indicates that the company has seen falling revenues for the past 17 quarters. In terms of forward guidance, management maintained its forecasts for full-year free cash flow and expected non-GAAP annual earnings per share of $13.50.
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