Shares of International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) rose more than 4 percent in pre-market trading on Thursday, a day after the company expressed optimism for its full year outlook and reported a higher second quarter profit.

Shares of IBM rose $4.27, or 3.89 percent to $115.40 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Speaking in a conference call with analysts Wednesday, Chief Financial Officer Mark Loughridge said IBM expects its full-year earnings-per-share to grow between 14 and 15 percent, up from a previous forecast of 13 to 14 percent.

It was a great quarter, Loughridge said. Every CFO waits for a quarter like this

The world's largest technology services company posted a 12 percent jump in quarterly profit as revenue surged on software-company acquisitions.

Second-quarter net income advanced to $2.26 billion, or $1.55 per share, from $2.02 billion, or $1.30 per share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 9 percent to $23 billion from $21.9 billion.

Analysts, on average, had forecast earnings per share of $1.47 before certain items on a revenue of $23.1 billion, according to Thompson Financial.

Armonk, New York-based firm saw higher profit on more than $5 billion in acquisitions of software makers, helping its most profitable software service divisions. As recently as this week IBM spent $161 million to purchase DataMirror, a software maker that tracks and analyses corporate data.

About half of the software unit's second-quarter revenue growth came from recent acquisitions, IBM said.

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