IBM cost cutting, software/services lead to Q2 profit while hardware tanks

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IBM does a lot of things other than HPC, and it’s fair to say that their financial results are probably totally independent of the state of the HPC market. But it’s also fair to say that a company like IBM wouldn’t maintain businesses that weren’t adding value to the bottom line if they were losing money, so IBM’s financial results are at least worth noting

IBM logoIBM today announced second-quarter 2009 diluted earnings of $2.32 per share compared with diluted earnings of $1.97 per share in the second quarter of 2008, an increase of 18 percent.

The earnings per share results were the highest for any first, second or third quarter in the company’s history, adjusted for stock splits.

IBM grew profit y-over-y this quarter while revenue shrank, reflecting close attention to operating costs and a growth in the software business

Second-quarter net income was $3.1 billion compared with $2.8 billion in the second quarter of 2008, an increase of 12 percent. Total revenues for the second quarter of 2009 of $23.3 billion decreased 13 percent (7 percent, adjusting for currency) from the second quarter of 2008.

SG&A shrank 19%, but the company also cut R&D 14% (both prior year comparisons). And healthy overall performance doesn’t mean that HPC at IBM is out of the woods. HPC is in the part of the business that had the largest percentage loss in revenue:  Systems and Technology Group, which builds and sells servers (including HPC), chips, and storage

Revenues from the Systems and Technology segment totaled $3.9 billion for the quarter, down 26 percent (22 percent, adjusting for currency). Systems revenues decreased 26 percent (22 percent, adjusting for currency). Revenues from the converged System p products decreased 13 percent compared with the 2008 period. Revenues from System z mainframe server products decreased 39 percent compared with the year-ago period. Total delivery of System z computing power, which is measured in MIPS (millions of instructions per second), decreased 20 percent. Revenues from the System x servers decreased 22 percent. Revenues from System Storage decreased 20 percent, and revenues from Retail Store Solutions decreased 41 percent. Revenues from Microelectronics OEM decreased 23 percent.

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Comments

  1. Any word on how Blue Gene sold? They are part of STG.

  2. Ben – as far as I know, IBM didn’t break out sales at that level. If I hear details I’ll post them here.