IBM turnover picks up thanks to cloud silver lining

SAN FRANCISCO — US computer giant IBM soothed market jitters on Monday with better-than-expected results and a slight uptick in turnover after four quarters down. 

Its stock rose 3.14 per cent during electronic trading after the close of the New York Stock Exchange. 

IBM raked in $17.7 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2021, up 0.9 per cent from last year at the same time. 

Its net profit, on the other hand, fell from $1.18 billion to $955 million. 

Cloud computing, which has become the lifeblood of the company, posted revenue of $5.4 billion, slightly up.

This sector is notably driven by a hybrid cloud platform that allows customers to use a combination of their own private servers and so-called public storage space, such as that provided by external service providers like Amazon or Microsoft. 

In early February, IBM announced the acquisition of Taos, a company specialising in data migration and cloud platform management services. To focus on this sector, the group began last year hiving off its IT infrastructure management activities, to make it an independent listed company.

The operation is expected to be completed by the end of 2021.