International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) is scheduled to release its most recent quarterly results after the markets close on Wednesday. The consensus estimates call for $3.04 in earnings per share (EPS) and $19.88 billion in revenue. The second quarter of last year reportedly had $2.94 in EPS and $19.29 billion in revenue.
If one Dow Jones industrials stock (at least aside from General Electric) has been the poster child for disappointing investors in recent years, IBM probably comes to mind.
What if it is finally time for investors to buy shares of IBM? That’s the new verdict from Nomura/Instinet. The firm recently started IBM with a Buy rating and a $160 price target.
The Nomura/Instinet analyst call came from Jeffrey Kvaal. The report talked up a differentiated cloud solution from IBM, as well as durable growth in analytics, security growth and valuations not reflecting an improving outlook. His report said:
IBM has built the foundation for modest but sustained revenue growth. Its Strategic Imperatives revenue grouping is nearing 50% of sales and growing 10%, led by cloud, analytics, and security. This should easily offset upper-single-digit declines in legacy businesses. Along with healthy capital returns, we model 5% EPS growth.
Over the past 52 weeks, IBM has underperformed the broad markets with the stock down about 6%. In the past quarter alone, the stock is down about 11%.
A few other analysts weighed in on IBM prior to the release:
- Guggenheim has a Hold rating.
- JPMorgan has a Neutral rating.
- Pivotal Research has a Buy rating with a $180 price target.
Shares of IBM were last seen at $143.10, with a consensus analyst price target of $165.47 and a 52-week trading range of $137.45 to $171.13.
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