IBM earnings Q4 2017

David A. Grogan | CNBC

Ginni Rometty, Chairwoman, President and CEO of IBM, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

IBM will release earnings for the fourth quarter and full year of 2017 after the bell on Thursday. The company will hold a conference call with analysts at 5 p.m. Eastern time.

• EPS: Excluding certain items, $5.17 in earnings per share as expected by analysts, according to Thomson Reuters.
• Revenue: $22.06 billion in revenue as expected by analysts, according to Thomson Reuters.

IBM has gone 22 consecutive quarters with revenue declining on a year over year basis. The current estimate calls for the slump to finally end — a positive sign as the company faces competition from faster-growing companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

For the full year of 2017, analysts are expecting $13.81 in earnings per share, excluding certain items. That’s one penny more than IBM’s guidance.

In terms of guidance, for the first quarter of 2018, analysts are expecting revenue growth once more, with a total of $18.42 billion, according to Thomson Reuters. Analysts expect $2.28 in earnings per share, excluding certain items, for the first quarter, according to Thomson Reuters.

Analysts believe some revenue growth in Q4 will come from sales of IBM’s z14 mainframe computer, which happened throughout the entirety of the fourth quarter.

And IBM watchers continue to focus on the company’s strategic initiatives — analytics, cloud, mobile and security — to deliver revenue growth. On Wednesday IBM stock rose 2 percent in premarket trading after Barclays analyst Mark Moskowitz raised his price target, pointing to growth opportunities in public cloud and other areas.

Multiple analysts are curious about whether IBM could provide information about changes to its services business. “From our perspective, any signal of a more aggressive restructuring effort (at IBM’s legacy software and services practices) could make us incrementally more constructive on the stock,” Wedbush analysts Moshe Katri and Ariel Hughes wrote in a Thursday note.

In a Tuesday note, Bernstein analysts Toni Sacconaghi and Daniel Chen mentioned that IBM’s normalized tax rate could rise in the wake of U.S. tax reform and that the company might even have to make a one-time tax-related accounting charge.

In the fourth quarter IBM acquired consulting agency Vivant Digital, settled a patent lawsuit with Priceline.com and said Daimler AG, JPMorgan Chase and Samsung are collaborating with the company on quantum computing technology.

IBM stock is up 1 percent since this time last year.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.