IBM piles up earnings in Q3

So glad to dump the PC business

By Team Register • Get more from this author

Posted in Servers, 18th October 2005 08:27 GMT

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IBM slipped past expectations in its third quarter results published yesterday with the offloading of its PC business to Lenovo this year still putting a shine on its numbers.

The company turned in revenues of $21.5bn for the quarter ending September 30. This was down eight per cent on the previous year. However, once the last year‘s contribution from its former PC business was stripped out, sales were up four per cent.

Operating profits from continuing operations were $2.9bn before income tax, up 33.4 per cent, while net profits were $1.5bn down 2.5 per cent. This delivered earnings per share of $0.95, after $0.32 of Homeland repatriation tax charge. Wall Street had been expecting $1.13 per share on revenues of $21.7bn.

The offloading of the PC business certainly helped spruce up the vendor’s hardware numbers. Total hardware revenues were up seven per cent to $5.1bn, when the PC business was excluded from last year’s figures. Most of the Systems and Technology lines showed revenue increases except for mainframe, which slipped four per cent on the year.

Global Services revenues were up three per cent to $11.7bn, with the vendor’s total services backlog up to $113bn. Software revenues were $3.8bn, up 5 per cent on the year.®

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