I think we peaked at 295 per share, now its about 30 bucks less. Can it rebound…
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@g6 Power has gone from a $10B business to $2B (and falling). Like z, there really no net new Power customers. It is all churn the install base. Plus IBM really no longer has the appetite for on prem Power sales and will do ANYTHING to get you to move to the PowerVS accessing Power systems in IBM's 16 WW data ctrs. It is all about free cash flow and recurring revenue. Power did have 2 of the Top 10 supercomputers with Power 9 BUT...it will never happen again as IBM was asleep and incompetent (maybe short of cash?) and did not enable NVIDIA GPUs for Power10 (and DUH Power11 either!). You need GPUs (and NVIDIA MELLANOX NVLink networking (NVIDIA bought Mellanox)) to be on the Top500 list. Power has not focused on Top500 or HPC for about 8 years now. Look at the GPU designs and you will see some interconnects etc that IBM had on Power9 (hmmm a bunch of IBM engineers went to NVIDIA when IBM dropped GPU support).
Of course the stock can rebound.
Make Z more compelling than it is. Bring back the two year refresh cycle. And make each refresh an absolute must buy. Also, think about modernizing the software stack. Make people WANT to use Z. Easy! (Except for modernizing the Z software stack.)
Make Power as essential to the world as ARM and AMD/Intel and... (Make Power Great Again!) Power used to dominate this list: https://top500.org/lists/top500/list/2025/06/ Now, the first appearance of Power is #20. The parade has passed Power by. Catch up. Easy!
Right now, WCA is basically rubbish. Granite is no one's choice for an LLM. Consequently, right now the AI play at IBM is 90 something percent consultation and the dregs are actual IBM's contributions to the arts and science of the field. Fix that by making WCA indispensable to not just IBM but the whole world. Easy!
Like the whole industry, I have no idea what the IBM's contributions to "hybrid cloud" are. I don't think IBM does either. By late 2025, it seems to be all about selling Red Hat stuff. Dig in and take market share from AWS and Azure and Google Cloud. Easy!
Obviously, IBM is going to lead the world in quantum as they did in cloud and blockchain and others. The reason I know that they will is that they have told us that they will. But, for the time being, maybe tone it down a bit until we can demonstrate an actual ki-ler app. It might not be easy, but show a little restraint.
There are a multitude of other technical products that IBM offers (and it is EASY! to make each of these better.) But the ones listed above are indispensable. Beyond hard core technology, IBM is the preeminent IT consulting company in the world. Especially after it jettisoned the consulting specialists at Kyndryl. Make all of these consulting cases fantabulous. Easy!
How do we make the stock go back up? Make the technology that we own something the world cannot do without. Like blockchain. Then, make sure that our consultants are smarter and faster and produce better PowerPoint slides than the other guys. When (not if) we do these things, it will be quite obvious that the IBM shares are grossly undervalued. Or we could continue to blow smoke up the -ss of key media personalities. Either way, we could see a nice bounce.
It's worse than that. In Q3 of last year (since we are about to get Q3 numbers), IBM reported a 9.7% YoY increase in software revenue. Red Hat was a 13% increase. Basically, Red Hat's contribution went from 9.2% in 2019 to 17.5% in Q3 2024? I used this source to refresh my memory:
https://www.nextplatform.com/2024/10/24/ibms-red-hat-acquisition-will-pay-for-itself-by-early-next-year/
Here's my point, IBM's revenue growth would have been much lower, and potentially negative (like when Ginni and Tonic was around)?
Not trying to give credit to AK about Red Hat deal, he dried that source of revenue and created nothing to replace it, only marketing PPTs.
Since Ginni and Tonic (sorry not familiar with prior to that to comment on), IBM had 2 consecutive CEOs that literally eliminated organic growth and just bought themselves into growth or let me correct myself, they shrunk the company so badly, but no to the point of extinction because they bought companies.
Ginni shrunk the company, from $107 billion in 2011 (before she took over) to $77 billion when she left (so she disappeared like $30 billion?). The only thing she grew was her comp. Then, AK comes in and shrinks it even more, and essentially dries the Red Hat cash cow and completes the IBM is now an Indian company process.
So, now what? Folks that are posting here are right, so long Big Blue, so long?
Over the last 5 years IBM revenue has grown about 1.67% a year. Pathetic. They used to have the best customer relationships in the world. IBM CEs customer engineers now SSRs were beloved by customers and they had offices and parts lockers etc in customer sites. IBMers on the bigger accounts had offices at customer sites. We literally walked the halls and knew everyone and were respected because we knew our SHI*T. Today many IBM "Sellers" were 2 yrs ago working at Ulta or selling mobile phones at Verizon or have degrees in government studies. New IBM sellers think a cloud is the puffy thing in the sky and a server brings your your food. watson x challenge is like watching paint dry.
Whatever Cramer says: "International Business Machines Corporation (IBM)’s CEO Is Doing A “Terrific Job,” Says Jim Cramer" (just 2 weeks ago)
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/international-business-machines-corporation-ibm-202223895.html
(Jimmy boy 0wn$ $t0ck.io?)
It's not good, but terrific job, look at that, Jimmy boy!! boy crush
Oh, really ? I was thinking it would get to $300 per share when he-l freezes over.
Or if Cramer kicks the bucket in mid-sentence while praising IBM shares for no good reason.
It will peak again to $300 with next layoff wave in the US and hiring in India.