IBM is not much of a dividend play these days. The hefty dividend was slashed at the turn of this decade. IBM's stock could be considered a pretty fair grower if you bought during the darkest days five years ago. It's actually outpaced Intel in stock performance since Gerstner came onboard...
techstocks.com
There also might be a good clue for the future based on how the street is treating IBM. Remember, it's hardware sales (and just about every other category) have been flat to declining for years. What has been growing is *services*. The clue is how IBM stock has performed since all the turmoil beginning in October, and more importantly, performed well with major business sectors at IBM showing no growth. That performance has been very steady, with a strong upward bias over the past few months. That tells me the street believes the future is services for many of these large firms, exactly the way CPQ is moving.
The other advantage of being large and diversified is safety, everyone knows IBM has been losing ground in PC hardware, but they are buffered by their other sectors. One horse companies will not have that luxury, and consequently will do better when business is strong, and fall faster when business is weak... |
