At this point, maybe it’s more like a train or car wreck whose shocking carnage compels you to keep staring at it. I still think there is, however, relevant information in IBM’s ongoing crash though I can’t deny the degree of fascination with it as almost theater. The company yesterday reported its 17th consecutive quarter of shriveling. Like a car accident, the scale of those four plus years is nearly unthinkable. At $20.2 billion in Q2 2016, Big Blue’s topline is just about one fourth less than it was in Q2 2011. And for the first quarter in a long time, management’s presentation made little reference to ‘constant currency’ terms.
There is any number of reasons for this fall, but the timing could not be more coincident to the big events of this era. On July 18, 2011, right in the middle of that auspicious year, the company reported Q2 results that had IBM executives convinced the reported 12% revenue growth was just the start of something big; not related to the cloud, SAAS, or the internet-of-things, which is all they talk about now, but in their core businesses and competencies. At that historic moment, they saw a very good probability of the world returning to its pre-crisis condition.
This post was published at David Stockmans Contra Corner by Jeffrey P. Snider ‘ July 20, 2016.
Recent Comments