Revenue at IBM fell 5.4 percent to $18.1bn in Q2 2020, while net income dropped 46 percent to $1.36bn.

The company has debts of nearly $65bn, and an asset portfolio of around $150bn.

"Many clients continued to delay projects, defer purchases, and favor OPEX over CAPEX spending in this environment," CFO James Kavanaugh said.

"This pause in large purchases and discretionary spending was most evident in our perpetual software licenses and project-oriented services."

In May, IBM announced a wave of layoffs that it says was due to the Covid-19 outbreak and its resulting economic impact

The news came out not long after IBM appointed Arvind Krishna as its new CEO.

Hope in the cloud

IBM's cloud business performed better than most of its divisions, reporting a 34 percent rise in revenue. Recently -cquired Red Hat, which is included in the cloud figures, grew 18 percent.

Despite business overall shrinking, the company was keen to point to some new deals it has signed.

This week, Adobe, IBM, and Red Hat entered into a strategic partnership for a set of cross-platform services to financial industry clients.

The partnership will initially focus on deployment flexibility with on the cloud by delivering Adobe Experience Manager 6.5 on Red Hat OpenShift.

IBM will also offer clients the ability to host, access, and leverage data in the environment of their choice.

Adobe will also provide customer experience solutions for the IBM Cloud for Financial Services.

In return, IBM will extend Adobe Experience Manager to its clients to deliver personalized experiences to their customers.

As a result of the deal, IBM iX, the business design arm of IBM Services, is offering its services across Adobe's core enterprise applications.