15 April 2003 Computer giant IBM has reported rising revenues and net income in its first quarter results.

Revenues from continuing operations were up $1.9 billion to $20.1 billion, compared to $18 billion achieved in the same quarter a year earlier. Net income rose for the first time in almost two years from $1.3 billion to $1.4 billion.

Analysts had forecast revenues to weigh in at $19.86 billion.

The figures include results from recent acquisitions, such as the $3.5 billion purchase of PricewaterhouseCooper’s consulting business and the £2.1 billion acquisition of software tools vendor Rational Software acquisition.

IBM’s revenue rise was largely due to the PwC buy, which helped it increase Global Services’ revenues to $10.2 billion, up 24% on the $8.3 billion posted in the first quarter of 2002.

Hardware sales were more problematic. The Systems Group — which includes mainframe and servers — increased revenues by a modest 6.6% following a year of big system launches for both the zSeries mainframe and iSeries mid-range servers.

But the Personal Systems Group — PCs — registered another decline, despite the sale of the manufacturing side to contract manufacturing specialist Sanmina-SCI. PSG revenues fell 8% to $2.4 billion, compared to $2.65 billion in the first quarter of 2001.

CEO Sam Palmisano attributed the company’s better than expected results to the strong showing from IBM Global Services, as well as robust sales of databases and application servers in the software division. He also highlighted the influence of the company’s utility computing technology.

He added: “All three geographic units grew and our focus on small and medium sized business is paying off as we continue to see growing acceptance for our offerings in this important segment.”