This Is The Scariest Sentence From IBM's Earnings Announcement

Business Insider ^ | 10/20/2014 | Sam Ro

[SeekAndFind]

We saw a marked slowdown in September in client buying behavior, and our results also point to the unprecedented pace of change in our industry."

CEO Ginni Rometty said this in IBM's Q3 earnings announcement, which revealed tumbling revenue and profits at the company.

The statement is troubling because as a global provider of business software and services, IBM is a bellwether of business spending. And a boom in business spending is central to the bullish outlooks of many economists and market strategists.

IBM reported declines in all markets: Americas revenue fell 2%, Europe/Middle East/Africa revenue fell 2%, and Asia-Pacific revenue dropped 9%. Management said revenues in its so-called "growth markets" fell 6%, with Brazil, Russia, India, and China revenues falling 7%.

Shares of IBM are down by over 6% in premarket trading.

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

IBM “value creation”:
Stock buybacks since 2012: $37.7 Billion...
Debt issued since 2012: $33.6 Billion

[MeneMeneTekelUpharsin]

Lies, lies...all lies. Those statistics are lies. </s>

[SMARTY]

I’m waiting for Harvey Keitel to get on the TV and tell me ‘This place is going to get caught in a hell of a shit storm.’

[longtermmemmory]

IBM is still following an old model. It acts like all computers are just tiny mainframes they control. They are delusional about the cloud security (lack of cloud security).

Their management is running the company using cliff notes of “how to run a 1950’s corporation”.

I don’t think they even know what business they are in.

[PGR88]

Stock buybacks since 2012: $37.7 Billion... Debt issued since 2012: $33.6 Billion

I believe saw the same article I did. It explained how nearly zero interest rates and financing, means that companies can even buy their own products, providing a boost to sales and profits, which will boost their stock price.

[The Working Man]

I don’t think they even know what business they are in.

---

I was once told that they are in the business to make money. The Accountants and Lawyers run IBM, they have only the short term bottom line and a ‘goal’ of a certain earnings value per share as their guides.

A formerly great company that still contains hints of greatness in a body being consumed by disease. (Accountants and Lawyers as well as MBA’s who really don’t understand the core business.)

[PieterCasparzen]

IBM has always been a very forward-thinking company, contrary to public opinion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM

You will find they pioneered globalist “new” ideas like having a female executive (1943), “domestic partner” employee benefits (1996), Thomas Watson, Sr, joins UNCF advisory board (1944), paid holidays, paid vacation (1937).

Last year was tough for IBM financially as well (5% drop in sales in 2013) and IBM executives went without bonuses.

I don’t think they are going away any time soon, if one views the company in terms of its longstanding firmly-entrenched relationships with government, corporate America and Wall Street. IBM announced they are investing $1.2 billion to build new datacenters. The company balance sheet shows equity of about $22 billion on assets of about $126 billion.

[Jim from C-Town]

Sure. IBM is noted for hiring only misfits and losers with no sense of how to maintain a business. Amazing how they maintain such a massive market share! /s/

I am pretty certain that IBM will outlive everyone posting on this site and if they saw a massive slow down in orders and business in September, it has less to do with their business acumen than the tenor of business as a whole.

[petro45acp]

Not gauging the “...pase of change...” speaks volumes.

From manufacturing to providing services, if there isn’t the capability to roll with market changes.....

[petro45acp]

pase = pace

more coffee

[wally_bert]

Lotus notes if ironclad proof of incompetence. It seems it is poorly designed on purpose with a heavy dose of soviet union Era efficiency thrown in.

[TexasGator]

A notable example is F5 keyboard shortcut, which is used to refresh window contents in Microsoft Windows Explorer, Microsoft Outlook 2007 and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Pressing F5 in Lotus Notes before release 8.0 caused it to lock screen.

....

In earlier versions the out-of-office agent needed to be manually enabled when leaving and disabled when coming back, even if start and end date have been set.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Notes#Comparison_with_other_email_clients

[Parley Baer]

Looks like another “recovery Summer” failed to pan out. So “unexpected”.

[Colehill1999]

IBM thinks old and is old - in the liberal way. The best tech people fled IBM a decade ago for Cisco, NetApp, etc. They are the giants now. IBM is like GM - a hollowed out shell of its former self with no direction and an appetite for gub’mint $$.

If IBM were a car it would be a yugo. Seriously.

[Colehill1999]

i revise that. if IBM were a car it would be a buick roadmaster - up on blocks and missing the engine - but still managing to get old timers to pony up and invest their bucks for the hope of it getting it back on the road again.

[Jim from C-Town]

The same could be said for virtually every software program, particularly operating systems, put out by MicroSoft in the last fifteen years, yet they hold a massive market share as well. Lots of large companies stumble at times.

[bgill]

When new bells and whistles are hitting the market every other week, the market gets too saturated and wallets get too thin.

[Moonman62]

If IBM were a car it would be a yugo. Seriously.

...

IBM made an important change in the early 90’s. They went into services and started recommending and selling the best products, rather than just IBM products. The stock is up almost 20x since then, not including dividends.

IBM has its faults, but it isn’t a Yugo.

[stig]

IBM is still following an old model. It acts like all computers are just tiny mainframes they control. They are delusional about the cloud security (lack of cloud security). Their management is running the company using cliff notes of “how to run a 1950’s corporation”. I don’t think they even know what business they are in.

IBM has always had great marketing. Their business model includes acquisitions of companies that leap frog IBM into next generation spaces the company did not have previous success in (SoftLayer comes to mind). IBM also has revamped its licensing policy to make products available to Entrepreneurs and start-ups (check out bluemix website and SoftLayer will provide cloud computing resources for a reduced price for fledgling startups). They are on the fore front of Big Data and have placed a large investment in the Watson platform which has the potential of changing the face of computing.

The problem is that some of this new technology is canabalistic to older IBM technology. So many of their future areas of growth will kill off older technology that was playing a role in this space. Net gain of zero but essential for the continued life of the company.

IBM has also spear-headed a number of open source software tools for which they receive no money. The Eclipse platform for software development had a lot of help from IBM software developers.