Bonum Certa Men Certa

Sedating Oneself (and Shareholders) With Fuzzy Buzzwords and Pointless Acquisitions

posted by Roy Schestowitz on May 08, 2024

IBM has been trying to buy time.

IBM sinking

Hours ago: (regarding IBM being 63 billion dollars in debt)

63 billion divided by 225k employees = 280k of revenue per employee That’s close to the 300-320k that has historically been IBM’s sweet spot. Given that IBM has transformed to a consulting company with 160k of worldwide employees, the 280k per employee is very aggressive. IBM acknowledges 160k of consultants in 2024 1st q. IBM acknowledged 30k of infrastructure employees at the end of 2022 (my guess approx 20k in 2024 given all of the downsizings) If 225k worldwide employee number is the aim point, that says the current 90k of SW employees is going down to 45k. If this is even close to true, it says IBM is milking the legacy via skeleton crewing it, and buying innovation which has a 4 year shelf life before it becomes legacy to be milked.

The cloud computing business is down as the hype gets deflated; there are aws layoffs every month and azure has had mass layoffs every year since 2020. Those are the facts. Who cares about facts?

IBM is chasing yesterday's buzzwords and now it's late to hang on to the latest ('AI').

They need products and substance instead. Buying companies for 'hype factor' is about manipulating the stock price, based on sentiments. Time for more buybacks.

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