Here is the IBM version of the next quarter, and it isn't pretty: biz.yahoo.com
Drive business only mentioned as being hurt by "margin pressures". Well, that's news.<g> And they say that Y2K will hurt, but that next year could be a very good year once "lingering" Y2K concerns are past.
An excerpt:
<<``Looking forward, we believe we will continue to feel the effects of the Y2K slowdown in the fourth quarter and into early
next year,' Gerstner said.
``However, even though it is difficult to make predictions, next year has the potential to be a very good year for IBM, once
we get past any lingering Y2K effects,' he said, noting that strength of its portfolio of businesses, where weakness in some
areas can be offset by strong cycles in other businesses.
``We're going to get some rough sledding here with revenues being lighter than expected and the Y2K problem hurting the
fourth quarter,' Bill Milton, an analyst with Brown Brothers Harriman, said in an early reaction to the results. ``It seems
like they're talking down the fourth quarter,' Milton said.
``This is even uglier than I expected,' BancBoston Robertson Stephens analyst Dan Niles said. ``This is not IBM specific.
It's an industrywide problem and they're finally admitting that they have issues. We're going to have to take our numbers
down,' he said of plans to cut his earnings outlook on IBM.>> |
