IBM profits better than expectations
IBM chief executive Virginia Rometty is passing up her bonus payment for 2013 despite the better-than-hoped for results
IBM, the world's biggest computer firm, said fourth quarter profits rose by 6% beating experts' expectations.
Higher revenue from software helped net profits to reach $6.19bn (£3.75bn) in the three months to the end of December.
Net income for the whole year was down by 1% to $16.5bn.
IBM's chief executive, Virginia Rometty, said she and her fellow executives would skip their bonus payments this year.
She said: "While we made solid progress in businesses that are powering our future, in view of the company's overall full year results, my senior team and I have recommended that we forgo our personal annual incentive payments for 2013."
The company's performance was dented by falling profits in formerly fast-growing emerging markets, whose growth has faltered in recent years.
Revenues from these markets fell by 9%, with the Bric countries - Brazil, Russia, India and China - seeing revenues drop by 14%.
Cloud expansion
Earlier on Tuesday, shares in China's Lenovo - the world's biggest PC maker - rose 3.5% after reports that it was in talks to buy IBM's low-end server business.
IBM recently said it would invest more than $1.2bn (£735m) expanding its data centres and cloud storage business, building 15 new centres.
That would bring the total number up to 40 during 2014.
Businesses are increasingly leasing data storage, computing power and web hosting services from a growing number of specialist cloud companies - effectively outsourcing their IT needs to cut costs and improve efficiency.
IBM believes the cloud services market could be worth $200bn by 2020.
IBM says it has added 2,400 new clients since it acquired Dallas-based SoftLayer. BBC
No comments:
Post a Comment