IBM Proves Again It Is America’s Worst Big Tech Company

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jan 22, 7:34AM EST

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IBM Proves Again It Is America’s Worst Big Tech Company — © grinvalds / Getty Images

IBM Chief Executive Officer Arvind Krishna has proved he is no more competent to turn around what was once America’s most prominent tech company than his disaster-prone predecessor Ginni Rometty, who went a long way toward wrecking it. The tailspin continues. Its place as an also-ran in the cloud computing and artificial intelligence sectors has been cemented.

International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM | IBM Price Prediction) announced a 6% plunge in revenue to $20.4 billion in the fourth quarter. That missed Wall Street expectations. Earnings dropped 66% to $1.41 per share. Krishna almost unbelievably commented, “We made progress in 2020 growing our hybrid cloud platform as the foundation for our clients’ digital transformations while dealing with the broader uncertainty of the macro environment.” Rivals, other than Apple, which include Google, Amazon and Microsoft, have had no such problems. IBM has floundered in an improving market. As proof of that, note that its Cloud & Cognitive Software unit posted a revenue dip of 4.5% to $6.8 billion.

After earnings were released, shares fell 7% to $122. In the past five years, IBM’s stock is up 7%. The Nasdaq has gained 195% in that time, and Microsoft’s shares have risen $330%.

MarketWatch commented, “IBM revenue has fallen year-over-year in all but four of the past 34 quarters.” Krishna pitched the fact that would change. “The actions we are taking to focus on hybrid cloud and AI will take hold, giving us confidence we can achieve revenue growth in 2021,” he said.
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If IBM does not look outside the company to find a new chief executive, its board continues to be irresponsible. This is particularly true of Michael L. Eskew and Sidney Taurel, who have been on the board long enough to see the disaster unfold year after year.

IBM has fallen from a position that once made it the envy of the tech world, which was a very, very long time ago.
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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.