IBM posted quarterly earnings that were in line with Wall Street estimates Wednesday, while revenue was slightly below forecasts as weakness in its storage and server businesses continued to offset gains in its software services.
Shares slipped in extended-hours trading. (Click here to see what IBM stock is doing now.)
The company posted earnings of $2.54 a share, excluding one-time items, on revenue of $22.48 billion. Analysts had expected the company to report earnings excluding items of $2.54 a share on $22.91 billion in revenue, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters.
Hardware revenue plunged 23 percent to $2.4 billion, while systems storage revenue also fell 23 percent.
Only software business showed some growth, with revenue rising 1.6 percent to $5.66 billion.
Revenue in the Americas fell 4 percent, while revenue from Asia Pacific countries dropped 12 percent and declined 11 percent in emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, India and China.
In addition, the company said it expects to post full-year earnings of at least $18 a share, ex-items, versus estimates for $17.84 a share.
"In the first quarter, we continued to take actions to transform parts of the business and to shift aggressively to our strategic growth areas including cloud, big data analytics, social, mobile and security," said IBM Chairman and CEO Ginni Rometty. "As we move through 2014, we will begin to see the benefits from these actions. Over the long term, they will position us to drive growth and higher value for our clients."
Before Wednesday's report, IBM missed revenue expectations for four consecutive quarters, leading to concerns that IBM might be stalling after serving as safe bet in an otherwise volatile tech market.
Slowing demand from China has particularly dogged IBM's server and hardware sales in recent quarters, and JPMorgan and Barclays both previously said IBM is likely to have difficulty meeting earnings expectations through 2015 without taxes and gains.
Still Big Blue may be trading as much as 40 percent below its intrinsic value, according to Reuters.
--Reuters contributed to this report.