With all the negativity towards IBM. No one can deny they make Billions upon Billions each quarter. They continue to do so.
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No one can deny that net income is shrinking year after year. Soon it won't even be enough to cover dividends, entailing a change in the dividend policy which will be brutal to the stock price.
IBM comes from an earlier time in history...a time where product lines are developed and supported over many years. Say what you will about their compensation and hiring practices, the endless RAs, management's lack of imagination, whatever. For all their flaws, IBM's legacy products have been around for decades. They are a mature business, and they continue to make money because customers all over the world understand and appreciate this.
MAANG (Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google) are hot commodities today. That doesn't mean that they'll be around in a decade. Google has dozens of offerings, but only a handful have survived over the years. If Meta is still around in 3 years, that will be an achievement. Apple will still be around, but making what exactly? More iPhones? World-class they may be, but IBM with all its problems is still on a different level.
The problem is that the profit keeps shrinking over time, as the cash cow (mainframes) shrinks over time. No company sets out to put new workload on a mainframe. No company that doesn't already have a mainframe will go out and buy a new one. It's a legacy business that is the only thing keeping IBM afloat.
Go to one of those websites where you can look up stock prices, revenue, and profit for a company. Look up IBM and view it over the past ten years. The incredible shrinking company.
Sure...
Do they pay some (fraction) of those billions to the worker bees.... ?
Is their total compensation comparable to what is offered to AWS or MSFT or GCP employees (such as RSUs or bonus).
Bonus (which was non existent for last 3 years during Covid ) is a joke.. Even folks working in private companies get 20-25K in bonus every year.
How is it then IBM can be compared to top tech companies.. What can IBM do, so that it is considered as world class software dev/tech companies and be added to MAANG companies, making it MAANGI ?