back to article IBM profits cratered 46% last quarter. But its share price is up ~5% because Wall Street expected that to be worse

IBM's net income felt the full brunt of the economic downturn last quarter, falling 46 per cent on the year-ago period, though impressing Wall Street. The 2020 second-quarter results [PDF] for Big Blue, ending on June 30, made for some mixed reading: Revenues of $18.1bn were down five per cent from the year-ago quarter, but …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    IT Angle

    New buzzwords

    The announcement itself was boring except to Wall Street traders.

    But Kavanaugh did use two buzzwords that I hadn't heard and that might be of use when battling bean counters: opex and capex.

    They are short for operational and capital expenditures but never underestimate the power of obfuscation.

    1. Khaptain Silver badge

      Re: New buzzwords

      Not so new, I worked for a large Insurance company 12 years ago and they were already meeting where CAPEX was being bandied about as a managerial buzzword..

      So they date at least 12 years ago and probably a lot more.

      1. richardcox13

        Re: New buzzwords

        They go back a long way.

        But really something that is most noticeable in larger organisations.

        (Important because they affect how spending affects the asset value of the organisation.)

      2. Gene Cash Silver badge

        Re: New buzzwords

        Er, I worked for a company in 1986 where they used opex/capex as shorthand terms.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    IBM, a company who made redundant all their venerable experts, replaced them with Indian outsourced labour and expected to charge the same prices... Unfortunately for them, their customers weren't that stupid.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Because they bought IBM ?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      or in the case of personal experience, trying it on during estimation to ramp up the estimate to feasibly unrealistic time frames with the expectation that the customer will negotiate it down. Unless the customer is on the ball, they end up paying the same for less. Some developers almost seem to believe that it is almost de rigueur that defects should be there and can be (system tested out) - there is no ethos about striving for zero defects. As long as the customer is paying, all is good

  3. ToddRundgrensUtopia

    "We are committed to building, with a growing ecosystem of partners, an enduring hybrid cloud platform that will serve as a powerful catalyst for innovation for our clients and the world."

    Who thinks the business bollox, above, is anything but meaningless drivel?

    1. LucreLout

      "We are committed to building, with a growing ecosystem of partners, an enduring hybrid cloud platform that will serve as a powerful catalyst for innovation for our clients and the world."

      Who thinks the business bollox, above, is anything but meaningless drivel?

      Hybrid cloud isn't quite meaningless drivel, but it is IBMs only hope now. Nobody configuring a startup looks past AWS and Azure. Google cloud barely registers by comparison, and IBM is a rounding error on that.

      They need their old legacy businesses, what millennial's of the investment world term "boomer stocks" to want to migrate from their IBM hardware into an IBM cloud as their hardware ages.

      The rest of it was indeed meaningless drivel. Though their main issue is how to encourage their "boomer stocks" to use them for their hybrid clouds rather than AWS or Azure. There seems to be nothing in there beyond being a corporate puff piece - a strategy you can't execute may be a good idea, but it isn't a strategy; a middling strategy that you can execute ends up being better. And I'd love to see IBM's actual plan to deliver that of which they speak.

  4. Julian 8 Silver badge

    "The rate and pace of that recovery is going to reflect the pandemic," he said. "We started out pretty strong as the US was getting the pandemic and the curve under control."

    So someone believes Trump's rubbish then........

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Shame

    It wasn't so long ago that an article on IBM would attract a hundred comments in a few hours, many of them concerned for IBM. No longer, I guess no-one cares anymore.

    1. Yes Me Silver badge

      Re: Shame

      All the ex-employees sold their shares, and current employees are frightened of Big (Blue) Brother, so nobody who cares is willing to post...

  6. QuiteEvilGraham
    Thumb Up

    So long as System Z continues to be sold...

    I will be content with IBM.

    I seriously doubt any of our customers will get off that platform before I retire.

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