Don’t get me wrong. I retired from IBM and I loved my career there. I have fond memories of IBM, but I am very concerned as I watch competitors like Microsoft or AWS. While IBMs competitors enjoy double digit sales growth, IBMs sales growth has been in the single digits. Can a company grow that depends heavily on acquisitions for sales growth rather than organically growing from its own products that it invents/creates/sells/supports. How long will the board members and major shareholders accept status quo before they start looking at takeover bids from other corporations?
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@OP if next 2 earnings aren’t good ibm will be broken up into several smaller companies
IBM did this to themselves
This statement is far from the truth: " the board allowed Ginni to spend a fortune on share buy back instead of investing in new business like cloud. ".
IBM spent years and money trying to achieve an in house "cloud development solution". It was a complete failure.
The effort became an Indian tribe space.
IBM business model is a classic cash cow with little bit of growth head fake. The board have long accepted this. For example, the board allowed Ginni to spend a fortune on share buy back instead of investing in new business like cloud. This is in addition to very high dividend.
There is nothing wrong with this approach. The problem is, IBM has been on cash cow mode for so long, it lost all ability to innovate. As you well know, there is no growth without innovation.
The IBM that exist today is as intended by the board.