To: John Pitera who wrote (2678 ) 3/12/2002 1:24:54 PM From: John Pitera Read Replies (1) | Respond to IBM--- More Accounting Info-- They plan to earn a 9.5% long-term yearly retuern on their retirement fund assets.earnings from its pension plan boosted Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM's earnings by about $800 million in 2001 , disclosed write-downs for investments and broke out other expenses and gains that had been lumped into catch-all accounting categories investors have begun to fear.raised a storm of protest by accounting for a sale of optical transceiver technology as operating profit rather than a one-time gain. rethink company performance. ``If investors choose to strip these out, it would cast a fundamentally different light on the core earnings power of IBM ,'' he said. Pension and intellectual property earnings increases had contributed collectively more than 40 percent of IBM's $1.07 rise per share since 1998 to $4.35 per share in 2001, he wrote. changed its expected long-term return on U.S. retirement assets to 9.5 percent from 10.0 percent for 2002. That, along with other changes, would cut about $350 million from net retirement income for 2002.so much of the income is based on assumptions ,'' such as long-term rates of return , said Sharav, who had not studied the new report yet.bad debt expense rose to $491 million in 2001 from $271 million in 2000, intellectual property sales and transfers dropped to $736 million from $915 million. Intellectual property royalties slipped to $515 million from $590 million, and the split between the two types of intellectual property revenue roughly matched expectations.
