Monthly News International
IBM Corp. announced decent third quarter financials and a new CEO
IBM reported third-quarter revenues of $26.2 billion, up eight percent from a year ago. On a non-GAAP basis, net earnings for the quarter were $3.8 billion, an increase of six percent. Software revenues grew 13 percent year-over-year while hardware revenues expanded by four percent and the services units, Global Technology Services and Global Business Services, gained by nine and six percent respectively. IBM pointed out that its biggest gainers were a 52 percent spurt in WebSphere family software revenues, a 15 percent jump in Power Systems revenues and a 19 percent expansion of revenues in the growth regional markets, which includes the BRIC nations. The only negative news was a five percent decline in System z revenues over the previous year's quarter, which was the first full quarter for zEnterprise sales. In addition, IBM's Netezza sales were up 36 percent from a year ago, when it first acquired the firm. In other news, IBM announced that Virginia "Ginni" Rometty, currently head of global sales, will replace Sam Palmisano as CEO at the start of the new year. In the nine years under Palmisano's leadership IBM's stock has matched Oracle's. Over the last 2 years IBM’s stock performance was very identical to Oracle but both by far outperformed rival HP. In market cap IBM leads with 222 Billion US Dollar on November 15, verses Oracle 166 Billion and HP 56 Billion US Dollars.
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