From MarketWatch, July 14:
Tech bellwether releases preliminary results a week before earnings were expected, showing revenue and profit misses
Shares of IBM took a deep dive in early Tuesday trading toward their worst day in decades, after the technology giant surprised investors by releasing second-quarter results a week ahead of schedule, showing both profit and revenue missing analysts’ consensus expectations.
The problem was the launch of the z17 mainframe program, which the company expected to be wrapping up during the second quarter.
“What played out was worse than our expectations, driven by a shortfall in our Z performance and the associated software stack, primarily in transaction processing,” CEO Arvind Krishna said in a statement.
The stock tumbled 19.1% in premarket trading. That puts it on track for its biggest one-day selloff since the record 23.7% drop on Oct. 19, 1987, a date known as Wall Street’s “Black Monday.”
He said that in the last few weeks of June clients shifted capital expenditures toward memory purchases, storage and servers ahead of expected price increases, which impacted client buying patterns.
While some supply-chain-related impact to IBM’s prior expectations were foreseen, “we did not anticipate the magnitude of the capex reprioritization,” Krishna said....
....MUCH MORE
I'm not sure anyone still considers IBM a tech bellwether anymore. Truth be told I had to double-check that they were still a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. (they are)
The company may have enough quantum computing stuff to make it worth sniffing around but the bellwether days are long past.
