IBM revenue disappoints as software sales mark rare decline

IBM Corp missed Wall Street estimates for quarterly revenue on Thursday, hurt by a rare sales decline in its software unit as clients shied away from longer-term deals due to pandemic-induced economic uncertainty.

The 109-year-old firm is preparing to split itself into two public companies and the namesake firm will focus on the so-called hybrid cloud, where companies use a combination of their own datacenters and leased resources to manage and process data.

Revenue from its cloud-computing business rose 10% to a record $7.5 billion in the fourth quarter, with IBM saying it is confident of returning to sales growth in 2021 and expected revenue to grow in mid-single digits after the separation.