IBM Investors Should Beg CEO Ginni Rometty to Leave

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 11, 4:20PM EST · Published Oct 17, 6:15AM EDT

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IBM Investors Should Beg CEO Ginni Rometty to Leave — © CristiNistor / iStock

International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) posted another quarter that shows how far behind the major players in tech it has fallen. The company’s CEO, Ginni Rometty, has been at the helm of IBM since the start of 2012. Over that period, IBM has been nearly ruined. Its latest earnings disclosed revenue down 2% to $18.8 billion, and its net income fell 1% to $2.78 billion.

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Rometty had the gall to say:

IBM’s progress and momentum this year in the emerging, high-value segments of the IT industry are driven by our innovative technology, deep industry expertise and commitment to trust and security. Our leadership in the technology and services that deliver hybrid cloud, AI, blockchain, analytics and security has helped drive our overall performance, and is helping our clients unleash the full business value of these innovations.

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Every part of the statement is an exaggeration. Among IBM’s major lines of revenue, three fell from the same quarter of last year. Two were up 0.9% each.

IBM’s stock fell 4.4% after hours to $138.70, just above its 52-week low. Shares have fallen 17% in the past five years, compared to a 60% rise in the S&P 500, a 400% rise at rival Amazon.com and a 210% rise in the stock of competitor Microsoft.

IBM recently has hit the market with a slew of press releases about its new products. Among them were the release of its Multicloud Manager, a public and private cloud tool, and the AI OpenScale, which is meant to help the management of artificial intelligence products. None of it matters, at least to investors.

IBM is a proven serial failure, and without a new CEO, that will not change.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.