IBM reveals increased revenues and profits

By Alun Williams

Posted on 15 Apr 2003 at 12:50

First quarter results for 2003 have been revealed by IBM. The headline figures are an 11 per cent increase in revenues that helped to create an 8 per cent increase in profits.

'In the face of an ongoing difficult environment, we delivered another strong quarter and continued to gain share across our strategic businesses,' claimed Sam Palmisano, IBM chairman and CEO.

'Our results demonstrate that our e-business on demand strategy, which draws on IBM's strengths in business transformation services and open IT infrastructure, is responsive to the needs of our customers,' he added.

In particular, Palmisano highlighted the role of IBM's Global Services. With $12bn generated in revenues, he claimed it as a second-best performance ever for the division. The server xSeries was also credited with delivering strong revenues, against the general IBM hardware trend.

While revenues from Global Services, including maintenance, increased 24 per cent, total hardware revenues declined 1 per cent to $5.8bn.

Software performed better, increasing revenues by 8 per cent. WebSphere, IBM's middleware for e-business, grew 14 per cent and its database, DB2, grew 22 per cent. Revenues from Tivoli and Lotus fell, however.

Note that the software segment of IBM's results includes figures from Rational Software, the development tools company that IBM acquired in February for $2.1bn.