I don't question that IBM's revenues have grown. However, Value Line shows 1995 revenues of 71.94B, and by hitting "Profile" at the bottom of the page here and adding up the quarterlies I get an estimate of TTM '98 revenues of 80.259B. If I've done the math correctly, that's a compound growth rate of about 3.7% for the past three years. Plus, I think in that time they bought Tivoli and some others (can't recall exactly when that happened, so I could be way off base). At any rate, my perception is that revenue growth is pretty slow for such a high flying stock.
As I recall, last time I looked IBM's EPS was just over 6 bucks, giving a PE of about 30. If that's only 32.4% of the industry PE, then IMHO the industry PE is too high! Call me an old codger, but waiting 90-100 years to make my investment back is just too long.
Sorry if I misconstrued the earlier post / apology accepted. I don't really have any ulterior motive here; I'm just trying to understand the IBM phenomenon, because the stock performance has been stellar! I commend those who have held the stock; as I think I said earlier, I was dumb enough to sell in the early 100's.
JMHO, as usual. |
