IBM: Fiscal 4Q16 Financial Results
Down each quarter since 4Q11, will storage hardware revenue ever increased?
By Jean Jacques Maleval | January 24, 2017 at 2:51 pmIBM Corp. announced fourth quarter and full year 2016 earnings results for the period ended December 31, 2016.
Storage hardware is decreasing by -10% in 4Q16 from 4Q15. These figure is down each quarter since 4Q11 (see table blow), a dramatic trend, and there is no reason to reverse in the future.
Martin Schroeter, CFO, comments: “Storage hardware was down 10% this quarter, which reflects the shift in value towards software-defined environments. Storage revenue declines were mainly driven by mid-range and high-end disk. However, we are now benefiting from a full suite of all flash array offerings and this portfolio grew double digits in the fourth quarter. We also continued to see double-digit revenue growth in software-defined storage, particularly in our Spectrum Suite and Cloud Object Storage offerings, which is not reported in our systems segment. Storage gross margins are down, as hardware continues to be impacted by both volume and price pressure.”
Big Blue didn’t give any figure for hardware storage but, according to our calculation, it was $2.400 billion in 2015 and 2,184 billion in 2016 or -9%.
Revenue Growth of IBM Storage Products
| Fiscal period |
Y/Y growth |
| 4Q11 | -1% |
| 1Q12 | -4% |
| 2Q12 |
-4% |
| 3Q12 | -10% |
| 4Q12 | -5% |
| 1Q13 | -11% |
| 2Q13 | -7% |
| 3Q13 | -11% |
| 4Q13 | -13% |
| 1Q14 | -23% |
| 2Q14 | -12% |
| 3Q14 | -6% |
| 4Q14 | -8% |
| 1Q15 | -4% |
| 2Q15 | -10% |
| 3Q15 | -19% |
| 4Q15 | -11% |
| 1Q16 | -6% |
| 2Q16 | -13% |
| 3Q16 | -9% |
| 4Q16 | -10% |
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