IBM: Fiscal 3Q20 Financial Results
Huge decrease for storage: -20% Y/Y
By Jean Jacques Maleval | October 21, 2020 at 2:05 pmIBM Corp. announced third-quarter 2020 earnings results.
After the third consecutive quarter with Y/Y increased storage systems storage revenue (3%, surprising record 18%, and 2% respectively), up after 5 ones down, this time it’s diminishing as much as 20%, worst percentage since 2FQ19.
Our comment for the former 2FQ20 results was: “Nevertheless, these recent good results will probably not continue next quarters and prove the decrease of all other IBM’s storage systems not in relation with mainframes.“
As always, no precise figures were revealed by Big Blue for its storage business.
For 3FQ20, the main reason of such bad results is explained by storage for mainframes that was growing former quarters following the announcement of IBM Z but now ending.
Revenue of systems (including systems hardware and operating systems software), at $1.3 billion, is down 15%, driven by declines in IBM Z and storage systems, reflecting the impact of product cycle dynamics.
Jim Kavanaugh, SVP and CFO, stated: “I’ll remind you, in the fourth quarter, we’ll be wrapping on a very strong performance from last year when we were up 63%. These cycle dynamics impacted our storage revenue as well, with performance driven by declines in high-end storage. “
Revenue Growth of IBM Storage Systems
| 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% |
| 1Q17 | 7% |
| 2Q17 | 8% |
| 3Q17 | 4% |
| 4Q17 | 8% |
| 1Q18 | -15% |
| 2Q18 |
2% |
| 3Q18 | -6% |
| 4Q18 |
-7% |
| 1Q19 |
-11% |
| 2Q19 |
-21% |
| 3Q19 |
-4% |
| 4Q19 |
+3% |
| 1Q20 |
+18% |
| 2Q20 |
+2% |
| 3Q20 |
-20% |
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