This has been a giant waste of money, especially for newer shareholders. The firm has
repurchased tens of billions of dollars of stock at higher prices than it would be able to
pay today.
https://www.gurufocus.com/news/1615084/lessons-learned-from-a-failed-ibm-investment
I've done OK with IBM stock and not bad in the 401k as far as those awful choices go. It trades in a range very consistently. Buy at the bottom, sell at the top. Of course it does not rival crypto and growth stocks in 2020 and a good chunk of 2021.
It's clear to even a rhesus monkey that IBM is not growth stock. All it has to offer are the dividends to retain investors, but it's not sustainable. They are essentially paying investors not to bail. It's burning the candle at both ends.
Then they get panicky and try all these initiatives of which you can say not a single one of them has panned out. Then they get stupid and overpay for $34B Red Hat and even inside of IBM, we don't hear a peep about Red Hat anymore.
Then they decide to split the company. It's all the classic symptoms of an old company drowning in a swimming pool.
Maybe they should go nostalgic-retro like the car companies and come out with a new System 360.
Smart folks