IBM soars most since 2009 after forecasting revenue growth

(Oct 18): After more than five years of declining sales, IBM says it will finally show investors it can grow again. Wall Street cheered, sending the shares up the most in more than eight years.

Some of that sales boost will come from one of the company’s legacy hardware businesses, rather than the new services such as cloud and data analytics on which IBM has been pinning its prospects for growth.

Fourth-quarter revenue is projected to be US$22 billion to US$22.1 billion, which will represent as much as a 1.5% bump from the same period in 2016. It also tops analysts’ average estimate of US$21.8 billion. In the last quarter of the year -- historically IBM’s strongest -- revenue will improve by as much as US$2.9 billion sequentially, boosted in part by sales of its new mainframe server, Chief Financial Officer Martin Schroeter said Tuesday on a call to discuss earnings.

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