IBM has completed “an outstanding year, with record profit and free cash flow, and exceeded the high end of our 2010 earnings per share road map objective,” said Samuel J Palmisano, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer upon the company’s releasing its 2010 fourth-quarter and full-year results.
IBM’s fourth-quarter 2010 diluted earnings were US$4.18 per share, compared with diluted earnings of $3.59 per share in the fourth quarter of 2009, an increase of 16pc.
Fourth-quarter net income was $5.3bn compared with $4.8bn in the fourth quarter of 2009, an increase of 9pc. Total revenues for the fourth quarter of 2010 of $29.0bn increased 7pc (7pc, adjusting for currency) from the fourth quarter of 2009.
“We also capped a decade in which our shift to high-value businesses, our global integration of IBM, our investment in research and development of almost $60bn and our acquisition of 116 companies have helped us to nearly triple our EPS and return more than $100bn to shareholders,” Palmisano said.
“As IBM enters its second century, we will continue to focus on our long-term strategic initiatives – growth markets, Smarter Planet Solutions, cloud and business analytics – as we drive to achieve our new road map target of operating earnings per share of at least $20 in 2015.”
IBM’s full-year 2010 results
Net income for the year ended 31 December 2010 was $14.8bn, compared with $13.4bn in the year-ago period, an increase of 10pc. Diluted earnings were $11.52 per share compared with $10.01 per diluted share in 2009, an increase of 15pc, the eighth consecutive year of double-digit EPS growth. Revenues for 2010 totalled $99.9bn, an increase of 4pc (3pc, adjusting for currency), compared with $95.8bn in 2009.
