Don’t get too excited about IBM

Profits up because the blue piggie is suckin the life out of the employees and what remains of the company. ibm - the financial engineering company.

Another foot note to this story is how the Tech center has been focuses on providing efficiency within the supply chain. In a down economy, Tech. is one of the few industries that helps pull profit and ROI out of existing processes. To increase margins with reduced Consumer spending, companies will be forced to invest in Tech. Good new for the sector.

Clever, buy a $60B appl vendor…. pooling of interests ring a bell? HSR perhaps? Don’t think so…. IBM went up application hill twice already and wrote off billions..

IBM is still in a downward spiral trying to pull any and all tricks out of its bag to still make margins.

If they were smart, they’d expand from the components and expand into the application market.

IBM should buy SAP to compete against Oracle and have a longer term future.

All is not rosy with IBM.

First, if you check you can see that the gains they made this year were in areas that were not so good last year. IBM cycles growth in areas where they focus their attention.

Second, IBM is doing well because they are cutting corners by “global” sourcing their staff. Why is this bad? Because employee XXXXX and XXYYY may do the same job but are not equivalent in their skill set and ability. So as they have a temporary gain in margin, they quality of work suffers. At the same time, IBM loses the value add of going with IBM and their margins start to suffer. In short. Short term gains, for long term losses.

Okay, so the author’s point is: 1) Don’t be excited about IBM and tech stocks. 2) Because their good performance still doesn’t show that the US economy is doing well in other sectors. Yeah yeah okay, but STILL the tech sector is doing mighty fine, stoopid… Anyway we all know that these analyst guys are hoarding tech stocks at the ridiculous prices they are advising us to keep them.

Leveraging global economy for growth has been a strategy of numerous organizations for a while now - it is good to see IBM is also succeeding with such a strategy and that in my opinion is a desired success criteria for US organizations. We need to celebrate this.
For those of you who travel around the world you will observe that there are very different technology footprints in many countries - one very visible one being telecom. The ones which are better than ours came from innovation and INNOVATION is the key to change and we need a lot of work on that front. Even if we cannot implement all innovations in the US, we still need to lead them - even if it is better suited for other countries. Perhaps thats how we maintain our leadership in the world.

The media is preoccupied with the possibilty of recession. Media gurus have predicted 30 of the last 7 recessions. If we have a growth slow down but don’t approach 2 negative growth quarters (my guess), the record will be 31 of the last 7. Negative sentiment, like media hype, is a contrary indicator.

IBM is fully committed to a global delivery model. The company is rapidly and continuously shedding expensive US workers. It has been so successful in quietly implementing this strategy that the center of gravity of the corporate staff will soon be in Asia. IBM is well on it’s way to becoming one of the first US corporations to become truly international in character.

OK, so WHY the pre-announcement on a very easy to predict slow financial news day? Market manipulation so somebody’s 12th cousin could make a one day trade killeing? Does over 150 points up on the Dow make sense at all? It’s like watching sharks in afeding frenzy - good time to buy RYURX in preparation for what’s coming - I did!

You are right on point! IBM is doing well because of international capital spending projects, not domestic capital spending projections. It looks good for Big Blue not the rest of the U.S. companies who do not have a strong global presence and depend upon US Consumer Spending to increase profits.

You missed the unspoken line of - “and we still 10,000 US employees lined up to be fired in 2008 which will improve our global position”.

IBM only beat earnings by accellerating share buy backs look for 1Q to also be good so that in 2Q they can take massive write-offs without damaging the stock price too much when they do the massive lay-offs in May.

I am sick of all the doomsday talk. IBM busted earnings in a time when everyone wants there to be bad news. Take the good news and run with it. Apple has Mac World this week and RIMM also reported a blowout quarter recently. Bernanke will help us out so throw yourself a pity party and leave the rest of us alone. Most of these companies are great companies that will be around a long time and as such deserve to be invested in.

Doesnt matter, Depression going to hit us anyways.

Right on Chris! And Ranter…please stop dumbing down this reply thread with your shoddy diction.

Interesting. So, since IBM stock did not go up enough (still below the price 2 weeks ago), there is no new information in the pre-announcement? Earnings and guidance looks great and if the price has not even got to the 2-week ago level, it means there is a lot of upside!

hey “ranter in dc”

I believe you want “exacerbate” and not “exasperate” ;o) haha

The “Bulls” have their heads in the sand as far as the obvious direction the economy is going. They consider “only a $5 Billion dollar loss” good news these days . If they consider that good news, I’m glad I have nothing invested in the stock market. I would never trust my money to clowns who think that way. They make sure they get their muilti-million dollar bonuses and that the investors are left holding the bag containing all the losses.

Whaaaaat a country!

Thanks for reminding us that for every silver lining there is a cloud. When will you do the story about Santa Claus being obese?

I fail to see the point of this article. IBM got great earnings and guidance, it’s hard to find anything wrong with it, but the writer still doesn’t like it. If it all boils down to how you feel, fine. But if you look at the numbers, they’re great. Bears should remember two thing: one is don’t fight the Fed. The second is that earnings are still very strong. The rest of the world is booming. It’s not all gloom and doom, far from it.

big lols to the translation for ‘those that don’t speak ceo’

i guess it’s for those that don’t speak english or if they do, don’t understand the words that are coming out of his mouth!. ( i watched rushHour3 this weekend…so sue me!)

my 2 cents…if you have to dumb down a paragraph so the retards can understand it, perhaps the retards should focus more on their ABCs and less on reading…learn to walk before you run…common sense.

just a vent by me on the obvious dumbing down of this world….it is pathetic and anyone that succors such people with understanding only exasperates the problem.

(for the people that don’t understand succor or exasperate….LOOK IT UP AND LEARN SOMETHING!)

Whoever wrote this article is a poor sport and probably jealous because he doesn’t own IBM stock.

Some people just can’t help throwing the sour grapes.