IBM missed revenue expectations for the fourth straight quarter as it grappled with weakening demand for servers and storage in emerging markets such as China.
Shares in the world's largest technology services company fell 3.5 percent to $181.68 (110.26 pounds) in after-hours trade.
Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty and her team will forego their annual incentive payments for 2013 as IBM failed to increase revenue. Particularly in China, the government-owned corporations that IBM relies on for a large chunk of revenue are putting the brakes on IT spending.
China accounts for about 5 percent of IBM's business, about 40 percent of which is hardware sales. The country's economy, the world's second largest, is tough to read, executives said. A new government headed by Xi Jinping is spearheading significant structural reforms that are affecting state-owned companies.
"China is going through a very significant economic set of reforms," IBM Chief Financial Officer Martin Schroeder told analysts. "While they have slowed, we don't think that this opportunity has gone away."
"We'll be on a trajectory to growth as we exit 2014 and we're comfortable that we get back to mid-single digits across the growth market regions by the end of the year."
Source: Reuters
