IBM Returns to Growth After 6 years

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IBM breaks a 22-month decline in Q4 2017, as total revenues total $22.54 billion-- a 3.6% Y-o-Y increase, bringing about profits of $4.5bn (an improvement from the -$1.05bn loss of Q4 2016).

IBM HQFull-year 2017 Big Blue revenues total $79bn.

"Our strategic imperatives revenue again grew at a double-digit rate and now represents 46 percent of our total revenue, and we are pleased with our overall revenue growth in the quarter," CEO Ginni Rometty says.  "During 2017, we strengthened our position as the leading enterprise cloud provider and established IBM as the blockchain leader for business.  Looking ahead, we are uniquely positioned to help clients use data and AI to build smarter businesses."

The company attributes such growth to the cloud , as well as new mainframes and processors. As such, Q4 2017 IBM cloud revenues are up by 30% Y-o-Y to $5.5bn, while full-year 2017 cloud revenues total $17bn, a 24% increase over 2016. Further boosting Big Blue numbers are mainframe and server products, such as the z14 (the first IBM mainframe featuring pervasive encryption) and servers running on Power9 architecture.

In total, cloud, analytics, mobile, social and security bring revenues worth $36.5bn in 2017, 46% of the overall figure.

For the future, IBM says it will continue to invest "at a high level," specifically through the development of technologies such as Watson-powered AI, cloud, security and blockchain.

Go IBM Reports Q4 2017 and Full-Year Results