International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) shares did not rally on its first-quarter results. They were far too poor and offered no proof that the company has begun to recover. As it moves into one business it claims has promise, another disintegrates.

IBM’s shares trade at $166, well down from a 52-week high of $196.86. The S&P 500 has outperformed IBM’s shares so far in 2015. The stock is down over the past year and two years. It has sharply underperformed that S&P over a period of five years. An investment over any of those periods would have cost money, compared to a simple S&P index fund. That is particularly difficult to do, since most of America’s big tech public corporations have done so much better

First-quarter revenue dropped 11.9% to $19.6 billion. Net income was off 2.4% to $2.3 billion. Despite improvements in its cloud and mainframe businesses, revenue dropped at every one of IBM’s operating divisions, although some of the figures received asterisks for changes in composition. Among its largest divisions, the problems became particularly severe. Global Technology Services revenue fell 10.9% to $7.9 billion. Business Services revenue dropped 13.0% to $4.3 billion. Software dropped 8.2% to $5.2 billion. While some of these changes represented IBM’s decision to alter the composition of its revenue, based on bottom line results, those efforts have failed.

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In almost all cases, when a CEO’s company posts poor results, there is, in his or her opinion, a silver lining. IBM is no exception:

“In the first quarter we had a strong start to the year. Our strategic imperatives growth rate accelerated, demonstrating the power of our offerings in these new opportunities and contributing to improved revenue performance. Our focus on higher value through portfolio transformation and investment in key areas of the business drove continued margin expansion,” said Ginni Rometty, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer.

Among the disasters, finding those “strategic imperatives” is hard to do, perhaps because there are none. At least that is the case based on first-quarter numbers.

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