After a five-year drought, International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:$IBM) is promising its investors that it will grow again.

The renewed confidence comes in the form of their legacy hardware, such as the cloud and data analytics, which have underpinned the company’s growth prospects for some time.

Estimates of fourth-quarter revenue peg the company at between $22 billion and $22.1 billion. This would represent a 1.5% bump compared to the same quarter last year. With analysts’ forecast coming in at $21.8 billion, $22 billion would be a happy surprise for investors.

IBM’s strongest quarter has traditionally been the fourth. Martin Schroeter, CFO, said that trend would continue with a boost of as much as $2.9 billion sequentially. He cites the reason for this boost as sales for its new mainframe server.

This growth would represent an end to the 22-quarter streak of shrinking sales for the tech company. The third quarter was close to ending the losing streak but didn’t quite put an end to it. CEO Ginny Rometty said that getting back to growth was a major goal for the company and that investors were looking for some hope that the stock can claw its way out of the rut.

During the third quarter, total revenue for IBM was $19.15 billion, roughly the same as the same period last year, but beating out the $18.6 billion average estimate. New hardware and software products are largely to thank for recovery.

After the news, shares of IBM rose to $154.33, a climb of 5.3%.

“Cognitive solutions has attracted a lot of our investment, and when we look at underlying performance, it captures and reflects a lot of the new strategic imperative areas we’re going into. We saw pretty broad-based growth across all cognitive solutions elements,” Schroeter said.

The first half was not so promising, however. IBM fell short of revenue estimates for two straight quarters, with the stock trailing down 11% in this year alone. This is a grim omen for the company, as other tech starts continue to rise astronomically.

IBM’s reputation as a tech giant with a faithful dividend and a reliable revenue had kept investors confident for much of the drought, but year after year of revenue erosion has soured the stock for many investors. Famously, Warren Buffett dealt the stock a blow when he sold off about one-third of Berkshire Hathaway Inc’s interest in the company.

The innovation of cloud computing has been capitalized on by IBM, however. Under Rometty, the New York-based division has focused on developing cloud-based software and services, increasing sales by roughly 40%. Rometty has also positioned the company to enter the artificial technology sector under their Watson brand, with hopes of selling products for IBM’s future as legacy businesses continue to erode.

Watson has so far flown under the radar, though.

When the quarter ended September 30, operating profit, minus some specific items, was at $3.30 a share. Schroeter’s forecast turned out to be precognizant as IBM’s gross margins did grow as predicted. Schroeter equally credited the growth to an increase of cloud business and an increase in software sales.

Featured Image: depositphotos/quka