Content area
Full text
IBM today announced first-quarter earnings results. "In the first quarter, both the IBM Cloud and our cognitive solutions again grew strongly, which fueled robust performance in our strategic imperatives," said Ginni Rometty, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer. "In addition, we are developing and bringing to market emerging technologies such as blockchain and quantum, revolutionizing how enterprises will tackle complex business problems in the years ahead."
"We continued to make investments in the first quarter to expand our cognitive and cloud platform and we increased our research and development spending," said Martin Schroeter, IBM senior vice president and chief financial officer. "At the same time we returned more than $2.6 billion to shareholders through dividends and gross share repurchases." Strategic Imperatives
First-quarter cloud revenues increased 33 percent (up 35 percent adjusting for currency) to $3.5 billion. Cloud revenue over the last 12 months was $14.6 billion.
The annual exit run rate for cloud as-a-service revenue increased to $8.6 billion from $5.4 billion in the first quarter of...