By Chavi Mehta

(Reuters). – Wall Street’s estimates of fourth-quarter revenues for IBM beat them on Monday. The IT giant’s departure from slow-growing businesses and its focus on the cloud helped IBM surpass Wall Street estimates.

Big Blue shares rose 6.3% after the bell. Big Blue also reiterated its projection for revenue growth of mid-single-digits by 2022, as compared to 3.9% last year.

After years of expansion and margin pressure, the 110-year-old firm has now doubled its focus on high-growth consulting and software businesses.

“This quarter will be your first chance to see the best of today’s. IBM “NYSE:” looks like and is a company with higher revenue growth,” James Kavanaugh, Chief Financial Officer told Reuters.

IBM cloud revenues rose by 16% to $6.2 Billion during the third quarter.

The company’s focus has changed to “hybrid cloud”, which is where companies use both their own and leased computing resources for data storage and processing.

Kavanaugh stated that U.S. revenues rose by the middle of the single digits in the third quarter, despite the Omicron outbreak raging across the nation.

He said that the industries most affected by the pandemic such as travel, transport, and automobile were rebounding.

IBM’s revenue from its consulting business, which is in competition with Accenture Plc (NYSE:) Plc) and SAP, increased 13.1% to $4.75 million.

The quarter that ended December 31 saw net income rise to $2.33 trillion, or $2.57 a share from $1.36 million, or 1.51 a share a year prior.

Adjusted for Kyndryl’s separation from managed infrastructure services, revenue rose 6.5%, to $16.7 billion. According to IBES data, Refinitiv.com, analysts had predicted $15.96 trillion.