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IBM reported 4% profit increase

The American company IBM easily topped forecasts results in the fourth quarter of 2011. This contributed to higher revenues from sales of software and services. The IBM's profit for the period was 5.49 billion EUR, or 4.62 USD per share. This represents an increase of 4 per cent achieved for the same period last year, 5.26 billion USD or 4.25 USD per share. Removing one-off effects earnings per share is 4.71 USD. This is 10 cents above the consensus forecast of analysts polled by FactSet. But they were expecting revenue of 29.7 billion dollars, and the real result of the company is 29.49 billion USD, an increase of 2% annually. According to the analysts, the negative impact on profits of IBM played a depreciation of the EUR against the USD. The reason is that Europe has an important stake in the company's sales and progress on the continent result must be recalculated in dollars to take profit of the company. The division of Systems and Technologies has recorded a drop in revenue of 8 percent in the fourth quarter. It falls within the production of hardware over the past few quarters say it came from increased revenue.
In software there is an increase in revenues of 9 percent, with most key products was improved. Technology and business services also recorded improved results, as their revenues increased by 3 per cent. The main markets where the company set for growth are Brazil, Russia, India and China, where in the elimination of exchange costs have revenue growth of 7-8 percent.
At the same time the revenues from the Americas increased by 3 per cent, while in Europe, Middle East and Asia has increased by 1 percent. In Asia, recorded sales growth of 2 percent, but when taking into account currency differences, there is actually a decrease of 1%. For this year by IBM expect a profit of at least 14.85 dollars a share, rather than analysts' expectations for 13.36 USD per share. The new executive director of Virginia Romeo stated that the company is on track towards meeting its goal in 2015 profit to be at least 20 USD per share. After publication of the report of IBM shares jumped 3.4 percent to 186.72 USD per share.