From Staff and Wire Reports

NEW YORK, N.Y. – IBM’s new chief executive said the tech company will maintain its push toward higher value markets and continue its focus on longer-term growth under her leadership.

Ginni Rometty, speaking during her first investor day as president and CEO on Wednesday, said the most common question asked by investors is what’s going to change under her leadership.

But, she said, what’s more important is what won’t be different.

Rometty said the Armonk, N.Y., company will maintain its 2015 financial roadmap, continue being transparent with investors, and focus on four growth markets of analytics, cloud computing, emerging markets and “smarter planet.”

“We’re truly guided by these big arcs of change that we believe in,” Rometty said. “They lend context and clarity. When you run a big company, context and clarity mean a lot.”

IBM shares have been up 19 percent over the past 12 months, respectively.

The company, founded a century ago, has evolved from what was largely a maker of personal computers into a global provider of software and technology services for big companies and governments. It has benefited from the push toward higher-margin, complex business such as analytics, posting steady financial growth.

As a result, IBM has been operating under long-term growth plans since 2007, wrapping up one program in 2010 and kicking off its new five-year roadmap last year. By 2015, IBM aims to double its per-share earnings from 2010, receive 30 percent of its total revenue from emerging markets, and spend $20 billion on acquisitions.

Rometty said that going forward, IBM will constantly shift to higher value operations, as well as drive new markets around new customers. In addition, she believes a new, third era of computing is now emerging, with machines that can learn. An example of the new computing is Watson, IBM’s supercomputer that won television quiz show “Jeopardy!” by quickly searching its database for the correct responses.

Rometty took over the helm in January, succeeding Sam Palmisano. She previously served as Big Blue’s senior vice president in charge of sales, marketing and strategy.

IBM last month reported its first-quarter earnings jumped 7.1 percent, but the company reported weaker-than-expected revenue amid a slide in hardware sales.

Rometty on Wednesday said weakness in Japan is continuing to hurt revenue. And IBM is in the middle of a hardware cycle, she said. Excluding those impacts, the revenue growth rate would be higher, Rometty said.

IBM expects new hardware systems to contribute to results in the second half of the year.