Thread regarding IBM layoffs

Are buybacks and dividend increases just Roadmap 2015 version 2?

Sure seems that way.
Keeps Wall Street happy and the stock afloat in the short term.
Totally unsustainable in the medium term and will have to be abandoned.
Destroys the company in the long term.

At some point there must be top line revenue growth.
To achieve that will require substantial investment.
That investment will need to be funded by cash flow currently going towards share repurchase and dividends.
Other alternative is to just keep buying shares and paying dividends until the entire business dries up.

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Post ID: @OP+107JK4aK

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@uoi,

“Any IBM labeled product that can be replaced with Redhat is going to happen and quickly”

Which products are you referring to? The only product may be ICP (replaced by OpenShift), but the rest will never be replaced by any of the RH products. Remember RH makes 3-4 Billion annually, as an example WAS, MQ and IIB only make that much in a year. You really think JBOSS, AMQ and Fuse are going to replace the IBM products?

I don’t think so.

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Post ID: @1hqw+107JK4aK

The laptops in front of the directors at the corporate boardroom table no longer proudly bear the IBM badge. Nowadays those directors see someone else's logo - Apple, Microsoft, Lenovo, HP. That tells them, loud and clear, everything they need to know about IBM.

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Post ID: @1nzg+107JK4aK

With all the new debt they have taken on, I believe they said that buybacks will be trimmed down significantly going forward.

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Post ID: @rif+107JK4aK

Too top heavy to have top line revenue growth.
Thought Bain was gonna take care of that?

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Post ID: @ygs+107JK4aK

I believe you are missing the point of Redhat. It keeps IBM in the game vs the older middleware/proprietary products. IBM only wants to engage in the Fortune 250- Fortune 500 customers worldwide. (YES there are exceptions but not many) Everyone else is a rounding error and IBM doesn’t have them baked into their go forward strategy. You heard the CFO on Wed say under-performing assets will be disposed of. He made no secret of it. GTS had the worst performance service wise, and storage had the worst performance HW wise. HUM what do you think he will do? SWG was not broken out, but you can see where IBM is going. Any IBM labeled product that can be replaced with Redhat is going to happen and quickly. IBM has to lock Redhat into their go forward strategy. So what do you do with all of the old IP that is fading away at 2-4 % per year. You milk it while it generates a profit and then you dispose of it. (does Lotus sound familiar). Watch for that plan to be ruthlessly followed over the next year. IBM bought Redhat to rebrand themselves. That’s where they are going

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Post ID: @uoi+107JK4aK

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