"In the three-month period that ended Sept. 30, IBM had net earnings of $1.79 billion, or $1.02 per share, a 37 percent gain from the comparable period in 2002, when Big Blue showed profits of $1.31 billion, or 76 cents per share," reports AP.
"Revenue jumped about 9 percent to $21.52 billion in the third quarter, from $19.82 billion a year ago, though the gain would have been 4 percent without currency fluctuations. The comparison figure from 2002 excludes discontinued operations such as the disk-drive business IBM sold to Hitachi Ltd.
"Perhaps the biggest blight on IBM's results has been its semiconductor operation, which makes chips for IBM servers and mainframes and for other companies but has had to cut jobs and pay at several factories recently. This earnings report revealed continued trouble in the technology group: a pretax loss of $96 million and a 30 percent drop in revenue, to $882 million."
