IBM (IBM) was the first major US tech company to report its earnings for calendar Q2. And this was the first quarter in which the company's new CEO, Arvind Krishna, has been in his position. There were plenty of cross-currents to consider in the report - that is why the shares have essentially backed and filled since the earnings report, along with many other IT shares. The company's quarterly revenues were around $18.1 billion, $400 million or a bit more than 2% greater than the prior consensus but down by 3.4% year on year as reported. The company noted that, net of divestitures and adjusted for currency, revenues actually rose by 0.1%. The company did see sequential revenue growth of about 2.8%, which is more or less typical seasonality. The company's EPS of $2.18 was a beat of $.09, quite a bit greater than the beats most often reported by this company. While there were some green shoots amongst the chaff, they weren't quite enough of those shoots to change the opinion of most commenting analysts. In Scotland, a jury can return a verdict of "Not Proven." In fact, it is a pretty popular verdict. When I think of IBM as an investment at this point, I am inclined to return the same verdict of Not Proven. I think at this point that IBM is still in the midst of fixing many problems that took years to evolve, and the problems faced by IBM will certainly take quarters to resolve.

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE