In after-hours trading, IBM shares fell 3.5 percent. The company’s shares had risen nearly 10 percent this year, and some investors were apparently expecting stronger results.
Like other large international corporations, IBM has kept some of its global profits off its domestic books to avoid the previous 35 percent federal corporate tax rate. Under the new tax law, companies get a one-time repatriation of those profits at tax rates ranging from 8 percent to 15.5 percent.
To benefit from the program, IBM took a $5.5 billion charge against profits to pay those taxes. But it did not immediately say how many billions of dollars would be repatriated, or what the company plans to do with the money.
IBM reported revenue of $22.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2017, surpassing the average estimate of analysts of $22.05 billion, as compiled by Thomson Reuters.
Revenue was helped by the weakness of the dollar, since most of IBM’s sales are outside the United States. Excluding the currency gain, the company’s sales rose 1 percent.
IBM reported net loss for the quarter of $1.05 billion, because of the $5.5 billion charge.
The company’s operating earnings per share were $5.18, an 8 percent increase and slightly above the consensus Wall Street estimate of $5.17 a share.
IBM got a lift in the quarter from strong sales of a new line of mainframe computers. Revenue from its systems division, which includes mainframes, rose 32 percent to $3.3 billion.
The company’s new businesses grew 11 percent to $36.5 billion over the full year, IBM said, and the cloud business alone grew by 24 percent.
But its big technology consulting and services business did not grow in the quarter, and declined slightly without the currency gains in the quarter.
By STEVE LOHR
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/business/ibm-revenue.html
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