UK and Europe buck trend for free-falling IBM

UK, Germany and France lead the way as Europe returns to growth for Big Blue

Europe has returned to growth for IBM despite the firm slumping to its fifteenth consecutive quarterly revenue fall.

Big Blue's shares slid last night on the back of a Q4 and full-year results statement that saw CEO Ginni Rometty talk up its efforts to re-invent itself as a "cognitive solutions and cloud platform company".

For the three months ending 31 December, worldwide revenues tumbled nine per cent year on year to $22.1bn (£15.6bn), a two per cent drop adjusting for currencies.

This means IBM has not logged annual sales growth since the first quarter of 2012.

Europe bucked the trend, however, as sales here returned to growth in local currencies, albeit at a rate of just one per cent.

"Europe returned to growth, led by continued growth in Germany, France, and the UK," IBM CFO Martin Schroeter said on a conference all, a transcript of which can be found here.

He added: "In fact, Germany posted double-digit growth and in December, we announced Munich as the headquarters for our new Watson IoT business, as well as our first European Watson innovation centre."

By category, IBM's services sales fell seven per cent year on year in dollar terms to $8.1bn. Software sales were down 11 per cent to $6.8bn, while systems hardware sales fell one per cent

Rometty claimed IBM is making "significant progress in our transformation to higher value".

"In 2015, our strategic imperatives of cloud, analytics, mobile, social and security grew 26 per cent to $29bn and now represent 35 per cent of our total revenue," she said.

"We strengthened our existing portfolio while investing aggressively in new opportunities like Watson Health, Watson Internet of Things and hybrid cloud. As we transform to a cognitive solutions and cloud platform company, we are well positioned to continue delivering greater value."