Financial Highlights
Thanks Arvind. As always, I’ll start with the financial highlights – and then comment on our revenue performance, business model dynamics, and cash and liquidity position before getting into the segments.
In the second quarter, we grew revenue over three percent as reported to $18.7 billion. We expanded our operating gross profit margin – and grew gross profit dollars four percent. We reported operating earnings per share of $2.33. Our adjusted free cash flow was $3.8 billion through the first half, and we’ve generated $11 billion over the last year. And our balance sheet and liquidity position remain strong.
We continued to make progress in our revenue performance, led by seven percent growth in Global Business Services and two percent growth in software, both at constant currency.
As Arvind mentioned, the spending environment is improving. We see this in markets where reopening is progressing, like the United States and Canada, and in several countries in Western Europe. From an industry standpoint, we saw a meaningful improvement in some of the areas that had been more impacted by the pandemic like travel and transportation, automotive and industrial products.
Globally, we’re helping enterprises digitally transform, leveraging our platform approach. IBM’s cloud revenue over the last year across software, services and infrastructure is now $27 billion, which is up at a double-digit rate. This continues to be led by Global Business Services and Cloud and Cognitive Software, whose cloud revenue this quarter was up 30 percent and 25 percent respectively.