After 22 straight quarters or nearly six years of revenue decline, IBM (NYSE: IBM) has finally managed to break this streak. 

IBM's Financials

Revenues for the fourth quarter grew 4% to $22.5 billion, beating analyst estimates of $22.06 billion. Non GAAP EPS of $5.18 was also better than the Street's estimate of $5.17. However, a one-time charge of $5.5 billion due to the recent US tax reforms resulted in a net loss of $1.1 billion, down 123% from net income of $4.5 billion a year ago. Adjusted gross margins of 49.5% missed market expectations of 50.8%.

For the full fiscal year 2017, IBM reported revenue of $79.1 billion, down 1% and net income of $5.8 billion or $6.14 per share, down 52%. Non GAAP EPS was $13.8, slightly less than analyst estimate of $13.9.

Strategic Initiatives revenue for the fourth quarter was $11.1 billion, accounting for 49% of total revenue. Revenue from cloud grew 30% to $5.5 billion, analytics grew 9%, mobile grew 23%, and security grew an impressive 132%.

This impressive performance was led by the strong demand for its pervasive encryption in IBM Z. The company also had saw good performance in managed security services within its GTS business and security software.

IBM ended the fourth quarter of 2017 with $12.6 billion of cash on hand. debt totalled $46.8 billion, including Global Financing debt of $31.4 billion. IBM's free cash flow was $6.8 billion. IBM returned $1.4 billion in dividends and $0.7 billion of gross share repurchases to shareholders. At the end of December 2017, IBM had $3.8 billion remaining in the current share repurchase authorization.