IBM reported disappointing fourth-quarter results that continued what has been an eventful start to CEO Arvind Krishna’s tenure as head of the computing giant. That trend is expected to continue through the first part of this year, with a possible turnaround toward the second half.

The dark cloud hanging over IBM was the 6% revenue dip during Q4. Krishna admitted to investors that 2020 had “many challenges” but that he thought IBM had “made good progress,” laying blame for the former at the door of broader economic uncertainty tied to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our performance reflects the fact that our clients continue to deal with the effects of the pandemic and broader uncertainty of the macro environment,” Krishna told investors during the company’s Q4 conference call, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript. “This put additional pressure on larger software transactions this quarter, and project delays in some services engagements. Our revenue growth was also impacted by IBM-specific headwinds of our product cycle and compare challenges.”

The depth of IBM’s Q4 performance will be told in the coming weeks as many of its hyperscale and enterprise systems customers report their financial results.

But, as has been tradition since it closed the $34 billion purchase of Red Hat, that division was again a beacon of financial might for IBM. Red Hat’s specific business operations posted an 18% year-over-year increase in revenues and helped temper the broader loss of IBM’s Cloud and Cognitive Software business unit where Red Hat resides.

“The revenue drops across the different business units continue especially in some of the areas most affected by the impact of the pandemic,” wrote Bola Rotibi, research director for software development at CCS Insights, in a report on IBM’s results. “That being said, the areas where revenue is growing and offsetting some of the decline are where the company is repositioning its investment and operational efforts, i.e. in cloud and data platforms, Red Hat, app development, emerging tech, and security.”

And in fact, Krishna pointed to IBM’s recent trove of acquisitions across those segments that he expects will help power growth this year. These include its purchase of application performance monitoring platform provider Instana and and Red Hat’s acquisition of Kubernetes-focused security provider StackRox.

“In 2021, we believe you will see that progress showing up in our results,” Krishna said. “With that said, we know it’s not necessarily going to be a straight line. The operating environment remains difficult because of what clients are experiencing at the moment. We can see that in the quarter just passed. Our revenue was slightly behind typical seasonality, but we finished strong in free cash flow, which is important, as it’s the fuel for investments.”

IBM said that it expects to grow revenues in 2021, “with better performance in the second half than the first half,” Krishna said. “And of course, all year we will be working on the separation of Managed Infrastructure Services.”

Krishna noted that while “much remains to be done,” IBM expects the spin-off of its legacy services business to be completed by the end of the year. That move will see IBM’s Managed Infrastructure Services and Global Technology Services (GTS) business units deposited into their own public company currently dubbed “NewCo.”

CCS Insight’s Rotibi added that IBM did indeed have pieces in place that could reverse its most recent financial trends, though, as always, execution is paramount.

“There are many underlying factors that strengthen IBM’s claim to be on the trajectory for a reversal of fortunes,” Rotibi wrote. “But if the company does not start to look like it will achieve the growth expectations it has outlined for 2022, and there are no sizeable mitigating circumstances in the form of macro-dynamics impacting the wider market, then the company will have some tough questions to answer about its long-term operations.”