Miss, make or beat?
7 replies (most recent on top)
I only stayed briefly after our acquisition, but it appeared there were a lot of people who called themselves "sellers" that were either a tiny chunk of a huge team, or, they serviced resellers who HATED them and wouldn't take them on calls because all they did was ask the customer what they were buying in the next two quarters. Two quarters later it started over with a new rep, so, they never had a co insistent face to the customer. Dumbest waste of grade a sales talent I ever saw.
@cma it only makes sense if you conclude that leadership has no long-term plans for the company as it exists. Maybe it's pure greed and they're milking the cash cow dry. Or maybe they're preparing the company to be split up and sold off. But the BOD aren't stupid, they must know what their "strategy" is doing to IBM and all its people. They have obviously decided the eventual benefit (to them) outweighs the immediate disaster (to everybody else).
One thing that just doesn't make sense. If IBM's strategy is failing, why doesn't leadership bring in new management with a winning strategy. I'm tired of seeing RA's every month. These RA's are cutting heads regardless of performance in Sales and Tech Sales. If all of the managers could get their heads out of looking at spreadsheets all day long and go see why customers are leaving , maybe something would get done! Cutting heads provides a short term boost to earnings. No one is impressed by this nonsense. AWS, Google and Microsoft don't have to fall for these desperate measures. They are eating our lunch.
Interesting topic. My guess, like in Q1, Z14 will continue to fuel the growth. Cloud will continue to grow because steps to put legacy on prem solutions under cloud. Saas components be seeded in as part of the on prem deals (seller carries both numbers so why not), that way can help to boost the cloud numbers too.
The odds of a miss are very very low. Ibm’s CFO has already reiterated the 13.80 forecast. That means things are ahead of schedule. With the RA last week, and the possible mid-April new round RA, IBM is just reducing established headcount (think legacy) costs to off shore (think low cost cloud) costs. It’s the nature of IBM. Late to the game, so accelerate what your competitors have done to see if you can catch up. Do you see any new ideas in those actions??? NET NET, IBM will financial engineer their way to a make. Growth will putter along at the GDP’s growth rate. No new business, but rather continued raiding of legacy, and calling it “cloud growth”.
IBM uses 'savings' in the retirement to manipulate its quarterly non-GAAP reporting. If the 'savings' of last weeks actions are booked into 1Q then regardless of revenue profit and earning will likely meet street expectations.
Seems to me it would be foolish, even beyond what we've already seen from IBM executive management, to lay off a large number of people in sales, if sales and revenue were Not declining (for what would be only the second consecutive quarter in several years), so based on that I say Miss.