IBM Says SEC Investigating Its Cloud-Computing Revenue Figures
July 31, 2013 Leave a comment
IBM Says SEC Investigating Its Cloud-Computing Revenue Figures
International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) said the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating how it reports revenue from offsite cloud-computing services. IBM is cooperating with the SEC in the probe, which it learned about in May, it said today in a filing, without providing further details. Revenue from cloud services, such as storing clients’ data and software applications remotely, rose 70 percent in the first half of 2013 from a year earlier, it said in the filing, repeating a figure it has disclosed before. IBM Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty has identified cloud computing as one of the company’s chief sources of growth amid a slowdown in demand for services such as consulting. The Armonk, New York-based company is banking on such faster-growing markets, along with buybacks and acquisitions, to help reach profit of $20 a share by 2015, up from $15.25 last year. IBM fell as much as 1.3 percent in early trading today. It had closed yesterday little changed at $196.01.
To contact the reporter on this story: Crayton Harrison in New York at tharrison5@bloomberg.net