Shares of IBM (NYSE: IBM) popped 7% on Wednesday after the technology titan delivered stronger-than-expected sales and profits.
IBM's revenue rose 8% year over year to $14.2 billion in the first quarter. Sales to Kyndryl, the managed IT services business IBM divested in November, accounted for 5 percentage points of that growth.
Software and consulting sales were bright spots. Sales in these segments jumped 12% and 13%, respectively, to $5.8 billion and $4.8 billion. The gains were fueled by strong demand for IBM's hybrid cloud offerings, which help companies integrate their private IT operations with public cloud-computing platforms operated by the likes of Microsoft and Alphabet. All in all, IBM's hybrid cloud revenue leaped 14% to $5 billion, placing it at a greater than $20 billion annual run rate.
Source Fool.com