IBM Common StockIBMHOLDMar 21, 2017Stock price when the opinion was issued
As of Nov 10, 2026. Market Open.
They transition from hardware to services and software. The stock ran up on the hype leading the earnings, but then that enthusiasm vanished. Any revenue miss impacts earnings and sentiment. IBM is interesting in the long term, but IBM has been considered dead money in the past. You get a decent dividend and management is good.
We had these stocks that were growing off of AI, and they've been delivering spectacular growth. But they've also had spectacular increases in share prices, which becomes a potential source of volatility.
The question is whether valuations are too high given projected growth? As we've seen here, some of the price adjustments can be pretty abrupt.
This is so big and diversified that even if they are not successful in one area of the tech business, they have other areas. He likes the shift they are making towards artificial intelligence, towards more cloud services, and reducing emphasis on the legacy dinosaur mainframes. They are moving with the trend, but you are not having to pay up for it. One of the cheapest companies in the Tech universe, at about 12X earnings with a dividend of 3%+.