End 2Q is coming-up in 2 weeks, so we all know what's shortly to follow thereafter. . .
Excerpted lowlights from the article --
"Revenue growth
IBM's quarterly revenue has fallen year-over-year for 20 straight quarters. That situation won't improve anytime soon -- analysts expect its revenue to fall 2% this year."
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"Reining in the buybacks
Back in 2010, then-CEO Sam Palmisano promised to double IBM's annual earnings per share from $10.01 in 2009 to $20 by 2015. To reach that lofty goal, Palmisano aggressively bought back stock. This was a big mistake, because IBM should have invested that cash into higher growth cloud and mobile technologies to stay ahead of the tech curve."
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"IBM can afford to keep raising that dividend, since it only spent 46% of its earnings on those payments over the past 12 months. In other words, Big Blue will keep paying you to wait for its strategic imperatives growth to offset its losses across its legacy businesses. But that could take a very long time."
https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/06/17/international-business-machines-corporation-in-7-c.aspx