Announced today. Thoughts? The timing of this seems rather curious.
16 replies (most recent on top)
Such a joke. Stock won’t go up. You can make more in your 401 and ira than gamble on ibm stock
Sad that every other company I have ever worked for was always at 15%, quarterly, and you could sell right away.
So I was pretty irked when the announcement came about the great new plan with significant new benefit of being abe to invest 15%.
eh? A tiny catch up to competition?
Well not so fast. It's purchased every pay period - making you susceptible to the volatility until it is cost/comission reasonable to sell.
If (you who can) click on the collateral it shows outstanding and very exciting graphics about how rich you'll become as this steam rolls with 10+% stock price appreciation every year. Heck - you'd be up 25% the first year and it gets better than that!. And that sales page in their now customary cutsie cartoony art (I was surprised I didn't get the confetti explosion when I clicked on something on that page).
if they want employees happier they should fix the 401K matching and distribution plan. Year end payout and matching is distributed - so if you max earlier you miss matching for the remainder.
Just a small example of over-sold yet compromised benefits
The ESPP had a 15% discount for a long time before being reduced to 5% somewhere in the mid-2000s (can't remember exactly when, I think 2005 or 2006). So, 15% is not an unusual discount historically speaking.
@1qvw+1f0h9xJp - You make some good points, they could turn it around, but they will need the right leadership all through the ranks.
In the 90s IBM made the bold move from water cooled mainframes to air cooled. IBM had to suck it up for a while as our competition continued on with water cooled machines until our air cooled caught up in speed and power and could displace them.
It was all new Tech and we were the leaders in the field and were not playing catch up.
I understand what you are saying but to do that we will need the right leadership to get there. In the past IBM was "fat, d-mb and happy" we made so much money that a few failures you could get away with. Not so much now based on where we sit on the leader board (we are looking up at the others and not down on them as we once did)
I did go out and look and I was incorrect on the number of splits. There were only 2, 1997 and 1999 and both were 2-1 splits.
@1den+1f0h9xJp, Never say never. IBM has been so drastically undervalued (every analyst everywhere has said this) as a tech company for so long (and for good reason obviously) all they had to do was flip a few switches, make some good acquisitions, cut some deadweight... and presto, a normal cloud company. Sure, it'll take time and likely never grow like MS or AWS, but it'll grow. These people are too rich to fail. Any company with that much revenue (50B-60B per year) and profit (12B per year) can turn around. It's not like it's THAT HARD -- which is sort of embarrassing for IBM leadership in the last decade or 2 if you think about it.
@gsb+1f0h9xJp IBM was a rocket ship back in the 90s when the stock dropped down to the 40s. Lou came in started making changes and then the stock took off. I think there were 3 or 4 splits during that time. I know many who gambled back then and put their whole 401k into IBM stock. They made out quite well after getting into IBM in the 50s and riding it through the splits.
That is not something I would count on happening now or going forward.
AK thinks that if employees buy IBM stock, they will work harder... oops! Nobody is working harder at IBM these days, if you are you are just a damn fool.
Another reason for low employee stock ownership: IBM's huge dependence on contractors to actually get the work done.
The only way I would buy it at a 15% discount if I could sell it right away like we were able to when I joined the company back in the 80s. We did not have to hold the stock for any length of time. A lot of people bought it and sold it right away to make a profit (assuming it was the same price or higher when you sold it)
IBM is a rocketship and you need to decide if you want to get a seat on it.
Wouldn’t it be funny if every IBM exec had to accept their bonuses in stock that vested over 3 years
IBM is a trader's stock (not much of an investment). Buybacks and the dividend is propping the stock up. It stopped being a widow's and orphan's stock long ago....
What employee in their own mind would buy the IBM stock even with an IBM discount?
Management is embarrassed by all the stories reporting about incredibly low employee stock ownership compared to other companies - employees without an additional stake in the future of the company.
Yeah, soon IBM will FORCE its employees to buy IBM stock!!
Something's up for sure