By @SiliconANGLE
Publication Date: 2026-01-29 00:20:00
Nearly five years to the day after being named chief executive of IBM Corp., Arvind Krishna joined Chief Financial Officer James Kavanaugh in taking a victory lap today as the company posted strong fourth-quarter and full-year results, driven primarily by accelerating growth in software and infrastructure.
Executives said IBM’s 9% quarterly revenue growth, the highest in three years, and strong across-the-board software performance validated Krishna’s goals of making IBM a software-led company. Software now comprises 45% of IBM’s business, up from 25% in 2018.
The flywheel effect created by software-generated annualized recurring revenue growth is driving cash flow that the company has invested in research and development, as well as recent acquisitions like HashiCorp Inc., Apptio Inc., DataStax Inc. and Confluent Inc. ARR of $23.6 billion was up over $2 billion from the end of 2024.
IBM’s free cash flow was $7.6 billion, up $1.4 billion year to year and “the…
