International Business Machines (IBM) – Get the International Business Machines Corporation report Shares rose on Wednesday after the cloud-computing-focused tech giant announced stronger-than-expected first-quarter earnings on the back of robust demand from global companies looking to increase IT spending for the year ahead.
IBM said revenue for the three months ended March was down 20% year over year to $14.2 billion but beat the Street Consensus forecast of $13.85 billion on double-digit gains for its software and consulting segments. Adjusted earnings of $1.40 per share, up 24.4% year over year, also beat Street’s forecasts by about 2 cents.
IBM has shed its legacy infrastructure business to focus on cloud computing growth last year, so comparable revenue growth was around 8% when infrastructure business is excluded.
Revenue for Red Hat, the cloud computing group that bought IBM for $34 billion in 2019, grew 21% year over year, thanks in part to an AI…
