IBM's first quarter financial results[1] saw a boost from Red Hat, the company reported Monday, though total revenues for Big Blue were still down year-over-year. The results are the first quarterly report since IBM's new leadership took the helm, bringing with them a renewed focus on hybrid cloud.
IBM's Q1 non-GAAP earnings per share came to $1.84 on revenue of $17.6 billion, down 3.4 percent year-over-year.
Analysts were looking for earnings of $1.79 on revenue of $17.62 billion.
Revenue from the Cloud and Cognitive Software business -- which includes Cloud & Data Platforms like Red Hat, as well as Cognitive Applications and Transaction Processing Platforms — totaled $5.2 billion, up 5 percent. Growth in Cloud & Data Platforms was up 32 percent, led by Red Hat. More specifically, Red Hat revenue was up 18 percent.
All told, IBM said its cloud revenue for the quarter came to $5.4 billion, up 19 percent. For the last 12 months, cloud revenue was $22 billion, up 13 percent.
"IBM remains focused on helping our clients adapt to the immediate challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, while we continue to enable them to shift their mission-critical workloads to hybrid cloud and expand their use of AI to help transform their operations," CEO Arvind Krishna said in a statement. "Our first-quarter performance in cloud is a reflection of the trust clients place in IBM's technology and expertise today, and positions us to continue building an enduring hybrid cloud platform for the future."
Krishna, a key architect of IBM's $34 billion Red Hat acquisition[2], stepped into the role earlier this month[3] after leading IBM's Cloud and Cognitive Software unit. Meanwhile, former Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst is now serving as president of IBM[4], heading up