International Business Machines Corp. (IBM, Financial) reported its third-quarter earnings after the closing bell on Oct. 17. The company reported revenue of $19.15 billion. Earnings per share were $3.30.
Revenue of $19.15 billion beat estimates by $550 million and reported a -0.4% year over year decrease. Total revenue for the quarter is now $56.6 billion, down just slightly from $58.2 billion in 2016. For the year, technology services and cloud platforms represents the greatest portion of revenue at 44%. Cognitive solutions is the only major business category to report a revenue gain for the year with an increase of 1%.
Earnings per share of $3.30 for the quarter beat estimates by two cents and increased 0.3% from the comparable quarter. For the year, earnings per share are now $8.64, an increase of 0.6% from 2016. Profit margins are down across all of the company’s business categories in 2017. Net income of $2.7 billion was down -4.5% from the comparable quarter. For the year, net income of $6.8 billion is down -7.7%.
The company’s strategic imperatives, which are its leading initiatives, showed strong results in the third quarter. Strategic imperatives revenue of $8.8 billion increased 11% year over year. Cloud revenue was $4.1 billion, increasing 20%.
Comments from Jim Cramer of TheStreet and Daniel Ives of GBH Insights provided more details on the company’s results.
The stock is currently trading at $160.92 with an increase of 9.81% following the earnings announcement. It has 931.94 million shares outstanding with institutional ownership of 59%. Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio) is the stock’s top shareholder with ownership of 5.13%.
Disclosure: I do not own any shares of IBM.
