“It’s earnings reporting season. While we at Roundup tend to
avoid all things financial beyond the occasional link to more
comprehensive coverage, IBM’s third-quarter earnings struck a chord
with us.“Despite a hefty one-time $320 million charge that flattened net
earnings, Big Blue brought in a profit of $1.8 billion. Without the
one-time charge, IBM’s third-quarter profit from continuing
operations would have been about $2 billion.“IBM attributes the strong showing to currency exchanges and
continued strong sales in its hardware division. And, indeed,
hardware sales were strong for its xSeries (Intel x86) and zSeries
(mainframe) server lines. However, they were less stellar in its
Unix lines…”