IBM has fallen short of its own expectations in the 2014 third quarter, reporting a marked slowdown in client buying.Total revenues from continuing operations came in at US$22.4 billion, down 4 per cent on last year’s corresponding quarter, while net income from continuing operations of US$3.5 billion represented a slide of 17 per cent.
Ginni Rometty, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer, labelled the performance disappointing, stating the company will continue to expand into strategic growth areas.
“We saw a marked slowdown in September in client buying behaviour, and our results also point to the unprecedented pace of change in our industry,” Rometty commented.
“While we did not produce the results we expected to achieve, we again performed well in our strategic growth areas – cloud, data and analytics, security, social and mobile – where we continue to shift our business.”
Rometty stated significant actions have been taken to “exit non-strategic elements of the business”, citing an announcement IBM and GlobalFoundries have signed a definitive agreement under which GlobalFoundries plans to acquire IBM’s global commercial semiconductor technology business.
“We will continue to make the investments and the changes necessary to manage our business for the long term,” Rometty stated.
