IBM beats quarterly earnings, lifts stock up 6.24%

International Business Machines Corp. NYSE: IBM is trading higher Tuesday after the company announced better than expected fourth-quarter financial results.

IBM reported quarterly earnings of $3.35 per share, which beat the estimate of $3.14 per share. The company reported quarterly revenue of $16.7 billion, which was better than the estimate of $16.06 billion.

On a year-over-year basis, software revenue increased by 8%, consulting revenue increased 13%, hybrid cloud revenue increased by 16% and infrastructure revenue was flat.

The company said it expects revenue to increase by about 5% by the year 2022, excluding contributions from Kyndryl.

The fourth quarter results give us confidence in our ability to deliver our objectives of sustained mid-single digit revenue growth and strong free cash flow in 2022, said Arvind Krishna, chairman and CEO of IBM.

Following the company's quarterly results, BMO Capital analyst Keith Bachman maintained IBM with a Market Perform rating and raised the price target from $153 to $155.

IBM Price Action: IBM has traded as low as $114.56 and as high as $152.84 over a 52 week period.

The stock was up 6.24% at $136.86 at the time of publication.