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IBM announced its second-quarter revenue on Monday, local time, which exceeded analysts’ expectations. The recovery of its customer spending has driven strong growth in cloud computing and consulting services.

IBM shares rose 2% in after-hours trading to $140.73.

IBM Chief Financial Officer James Kavanaugh told Reuters that as the economy recovers, especially in North America and Western Europe, the overall recovery in tourism, transportation, industry and consumption is on track. More customers have invested in business digitization.

After the epidemic hits existing business models, more companies have begun to adopt hybrid cloud, that is, use their own data centers and leased computing resources to manage and process data.

Sales of IBM's cloud business in the quarter increased by 13% to $7 billion.

IBM saw a $1 trillion market opportunity in the "hybrid cloud" field, so it has been investing heavily in cloud computing and artificial intelligence, and it has also divested its slow-growing but large-scale managed infrastructure business.

Kavanaugh said that since the beginning of this year, the company has spent about $3 billion in eight acquisitions.

For the quarter ended June 30, IBM's net profit fell to 1.33 billion U.S. dollars, or earnings per share (eps) of 1.47 U.S. dollars, compared with 1.36 billion U.S. dollars and 1.52 U.S. dollars in the same period last year.

According to Refinitiv's IBES data, the company's total revenue increased by 3% to 18.75 billion U.S. dollars, exceeding expectations of 18.29 billion U.S. dollars.