IBM reported third-quarter adjusted earnings and revenue above Wall Street expectations, with software sales rising 8% even as its consulting unit posted flat revenue. The results give the company support for its full-year growth outlook, but also expose an uneven operating picture behind its broader artificial-intelligence strategy.
CNBC reported Oct. 21 that IBM earned $2.95 per share on an adjusted basis, compared with the $2.86 LSEG consensus estimate. Revenue was $17.10 billion, above the $16.82 billion estimate. The $0.09-per-share earnings beat and $280 million revenue beat were accompanied by roughly 5% year-over-year revenue growth, according to CNBC’s account of the company’s results.
Software carries the growth case
Software revenue reached $7.80 billion, up 8% from a year earlier. Consulting revenue was $5.34 billion, unchanged from the prior-year period and slightly below the StreetAccount expectation cited by CNBC. Infrastructure revenue also grew and exceeded the estimate reported by the network, though the available report did not provide a segment revenue figure in the same summary.
The contrast is important because the two businesses sit at different points in IBM’s pitch to customers. Software is the larger reported segment and supplied nearly 46% of total quarterly revenue when measured against the $17.10 billion company total. Consulting represented about 31%. Those percentages are simple comparisons of segment revenue to total revenue, not measures of profitability or of a segment’s contribution to companywide growth.
IBM’s reported GAAP profit was $2.19 billion, or $2.30 per share, up from $1.74 billion, or $1.84 per share, a year earlier, CNBC said. The adjusted $2.95-per-share figure should not be treated as the GAAP result: CNBC said the adjusted measure excluded acquisition-related adjustments. The difference between the two per-share figures is $0.65, underscoring why the earnings beat is best understood as a comparison against the LSEG adjusted-EPS benchmark rather than a direct comparison with reported net income.
IBM kept its forecast for 2026 constant-currency revenue growth of 4% to 5%. It also said it now expects full-year free cash flow to rise by more than $1 billion, a formulation CNBC described as firmer than its previous expectation of approximately $1 billion in growth. Constant-currency guidance removes the effect of exchange-rate movements from the company’s growth target, making it a better indicator of IBM’s underlying operating target than a reported-dollar forecast would be.
AI disclosures show exposure, not a standalone revenue line
Management used the quarter to emphasize artificial intelligence, with Chief Executive Arvind Krishna describing client deployments of what IBM calls “Super Intelligence.” The terminology is an executive characterization of IBM’s positioning, however, rather than a separately reported product category or revenue stream.
Chief Financial Officer Jim Kavanaugh said AI-related work accounted for about 30% of quarterly consulting revenue and 35% of the consulting backlog, according to CNBC. Applying the 30% figure to the reported $5.34 billion in consulting revenue implies about $1.6 billion of consulting revenue involved AI-related work during the quarter. That is an approximation, not a company-reported AI revenue total, and it does not establish how much revenue came from AI software, implementation services or broader projects that included AI as one element.
The backlog percentage points to an expanding AI component in future consulting work, but it does not disclose the dollar value of that backlog, its timing or its expected margin. IBM also did not provide sufficient detail in the reported results to isolate the reasons consulting gross margin narrowed sequentially. Kavanaugh said the company was reinvesting productivity gains into digital assets as it moves toward a services-as-software model, but the quarterly figures do not quantify the financial effect of that effort.
Quarterly context and the market response
The third-quarter revenue figure was modestly below IBM’s immediately preceding quarterly revenue of $17.162 billion, while net income was slightly higher than the prior quarter’s $2.165 billion. Those June-quarter figures come from IBM’s Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The sequential revenue difference is $62 million, and the net-income difference is $25 million, but the comparison should be read cautiously because IBM’s business has seasonal patterns and the two quarters have different sales mixes.
The more consequential comparison for investors was against the consensus estimates and IBM’s own full-year framework. On those measures, the company exceeded the quarterly benchmarks without changing its 4% to 5% constant-currency revenue target. Yet consulting’s flat sales and sequential margin decline leave the AI story more clearly demonstrated in software growth and in management’s backlog metrics than in an acceleration of consulting revenue.
Shares slipped in extended trading after the results, CNBC reported. The report did not establish a single reason for the move, and IBM’s disclosures as described by CNBC do not provide a standalone revenue figure for the Super Intelligence initiative that management highlighted.