ARMONK (dpa-AFX) - International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) Tuesday reported a profit for the fourth quarter that trumped Wall Street estimates, while revenues also surpassed expectations. Moving ahead, the company issued a strong outlook for the full year 2020.
Armonk, New York-based IBM reported fourth-quarter profit of $3.67 billion or $4.11 per share, up from last year's profit of $1.95 billion or $2.15 per share.
Excluding one-time items, earnings from continuing operations were $4.71 per share. Analysts had a consensus earnings estimate of $4.68 per share for the quarter.
IBM's fourth-quarter revenues inched up 0.1% to $21.78 billion from $21.76 billion last year. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected revenues of $21.64 billion for the quarter.
IBM is divesting off its low-margin and unprofitable hardware businesses to improve profitability. The company is now striving hard to make IBM a company that provides cloud computing and data analytics.
Chief Executive Ginni Rometty said, 'We ended 2019 on a strong note, returning to overall revenue growth in the quarter, led by accelerated cloud performance. Looking ahead, this positions us for sustained revenue growth in 2020 as we continue to help our clients shift their mission-critical workloads to the hybrid cloud and scale their efforts to become a cognitive enterprise.'
Total cloud revenue was $6.8 billion, up 21 percent. Revenue growth in Cloud & Cognitive Software were 9%, while Systems segments grew 16%.
Looking forward to 2020, the company expects adjusted EPS of $13.35 per share. Analysts currently estimate earnings of $13.29 per share.
IBM closed Tuesday's trading at $139.17, up $0.86 or 0.62%, on the NYSE. The stock further gained $6.10 or 4.38% in the after-hours trade.
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