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IBM (IBM) Stock Pops On Q3 Cloud Revenue Growth

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International Business Machines (IBM - Free Report) just released its third-quarter 2017 financial results, posting earnings of $3.30 per share and revenues of $19.15 billion. Currently, IBM is a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell), and is up 3.43% to $151.57 per share in after-hours trading shortly after its earnings report was released.

IBM:

Beat earnings estimates. The company posted earnings of $3.30 per share (excluding $0.38 from non-recurring items), beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $3.28 per share.

Beat revenue estimates. The company saw revenue figures of $19.15 billion, topping our consensus estimate of $18.67 billion.

The company experienced a marginal gain in its third-quarter earnings from the $3.29 per share IBM posted in the year-ago period. IBM’s overall revenues fell 0.4% from last year as slower sales from its core business were offset slightly by gains in newer sectors.

IBM’s cloud revenues soared 20% in the quarter to hit $4.1 billion. This brings the company’s vitally important cloud computing revenues to $15.8 billion over the last 12 months. The firm’s analytics revenues gained 5%, while mobile sales grew 7%. On top of these gains, IBM’s security sector revenues jumped 51%.

At the end of its third-quarter, IBM had $2.5 billion in free cash flow and returned $1.4 billion in dividends. As of the end of September, the technology giant had $1.5 billion remaining in its current share repurchase authorization plan. And the company closed the quarter with $11.5 billion of cash on hand.

For its full-year, IBM now projects to post diluted, non-GAAP earnings of at least $13.80 per share. IBM also reaffirmed its flat free cash flow projection.

“In the third quarter we achieved double-digit growth in our strategic imperatives, extended our enterprise cloud leadership, and expanded our cognitive solutions business,” IBM chairman, president and CEO Ginni Rometty said in a statement. “There was enthusiastic adoption of IBM's new z Systems mainframe, which delivers breakthrough security capabilities to our clients.”

Here’s a graph that looks at IBM’s Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise history:

IBM is an information technology (IT) company. The company operates in five segments: Global Technology Services, Global Business Services, Software, Systems and Technology, and Global Financing. The Global Technology Services segment provides IT infrastructure services and business process services. The Global Business Services segment offers professional services and application management services. The Software segment consists primarily of middleware and operating systems software. The Systems and Technology segment provides computing power and storage solutions; and semiconductor technology products and packaging solutions. The Global Financing segment invests in financing assets, leverages with debt and manages the associated risks. IBM is headquartered in Armonk, New York.

Check back later for our full analysis on IBM’s earnings report!

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