Surprise! IBM forecasts sunny 2009

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- In what promises to be a dismal year for tech spending, IBM Corp. packed a wallop of a surprise with its 2009 profit guidance: the numbers were so far ahead of Wall Street's forecast they were initially met with disbelief.

The Armonk, N.Y.-based company predicted at least $9.20 per share in profit in 2009, a full 45 cents per share better than the average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. The forecast is an extremely bullish statement by IBM. It reflects the company's belief that it can outmaneuver the financial crisis by focusing on services and software deals that carry big profit margins, but also help businesses cut costs by offloading some of their tech chores.

IBM revealed the rosy forecast Tuesday as it reported profit for the fourth quarter of 2008 that also sailed past analyst estimates.

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IBM's results show that while the company has seen some sales vaporize, it is still able to wring out better profits because of aggressive cost-cutting and by focusing only on the most profitable deals.

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Rick Hanna, an equity analyst with Morningstar Inc., said he is concerned about the slowdown in some of IBM's hardware sales, since having IBM machines inside a business helps sell software and other services. Still, Hanna said he was "very, very impressed" with IBM's ability to improve profit margins despite the grisly economic landscape.

"When I was reading through it my first comment was 'wow,'" he said. "It really speaks to them developing their high-value-added strategy and executing it. ... You've got to recognize that this isn't your father's IBM. It's not the one that's so hardware-dependent. Software and services tend to be more resilient, and they're proving that."

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/In-dreary-ti...f-14110692.html

[Pinocchio Liberal 268]

AJ do you beleive all the ####### you post?

[mox 298]

And so it begins again.

IBM: We predict we will make money, despite industry forecasts.

Analysts: OMG IBM you are so AWESOME BUY IBM BUY IBM!!!!!

[Jasman0717 9]

Big Blue is out the door at my work

[Nikita2Charles 32]

I wouldn't be surprise, with cheap labor cost overseas,

Is that exactly what we need to take the country out of that rotten slum, downturn whatever you wanna call it.

After the dot.com bust companies went out doing OUTSOURCING WITH A VENGENCE under the name of cost cutting, since there was a backslash on some companies, they change the name to OFFSHORING, when people starting to realize it's the same outsourcing #######, they change the name again to LOW COST REGION, different names but same ideas.

With that in mind for companies trying to increase their profit margin, we will see MORE OUTSOURCING/OFFSHORING/LOW COST region whatever name they want to give it.

and that only spell Disaster since more Jobs will go overseas, and the FEW JOBS LEFT, They will bring more H1, even B1 to fill those slots.

Simple personal experience, when my wife 1st got here, I applied at work for a position that was listed under the bay area. After a week there was no news so I went and had a talk with the HR Lady, and you won't beleive what came out of her mouth.

This REQ IS RESERVED FOR AN H1 from Chennai, IF YOUR WIFE WAS IN INDIA SHE WOULD HAVE GOTEN THE JOB.

My question was, IF that Req is for India, it's a Global company, WHY IS THE JOB LISTED UNDER SAN JOSE CALIFORNIA?

Each region has their own listings, so when you go to the Software group and 95% of them are from HCL india, then you know what's happening.

IS there anybody in place within the Department of Labor who would actually check on those companies, ask them for the data, they have tried in good faith to hire locally and couldn't find the available ressources.

YOU GO AND TRY THAT IN GERMANY? or ANYWHERE IN EUROPE

ONLY IN AMERICA!!!

Edited January 21, 2009 by Nikita2Charles

[NickD 203]

Wonder why IBM with all their power and knowledge can't write a simple OS, what a stupid mistake to license it out to a high school kid. And they certainly had the resources to develop their own microprocessor, what were they thinking? Brother worked for them for a year, couldn't take neither their BS or their arrogance, I never bothered applying, but they were on top of the hill.

Ha, Seymor Clay lives nearby, another arrogant SOB, claimed the speed of light was is only limitation, that was BS, used all off the shelve discrete integrated circuits and miles of wire, guess he never heard of distributed inductance and capacitance. Talk to him about actually very simple ASIC design that would save miles of cables and vastly increase the speed. Just a bit hard headed, so he also is history. I never had the resouces to tackle this job myself so just went automotive, that was boring as hell, but designing cheap 12 volt ####### that could withstand 150 volts spikes was challenging, did manage to get 22 patents.

Smith Corona was another dumb company that forgot they were in the printing business rather than trying to keep a bunch of mechanical engineers busy when the rest of the world was going all electronic.

Would be nice to see a free market society in the software business, in particular with the OS.

[mawilson 2,133]

Wonder why IBM with all their power and knowledge can't write a simple OS, what a stupid mistake to license it out to a high school kid.

Huh?

IBM has written several operating systems.

AIX to name one that is still a multi-billion dollar business.

OS/400 and z/OS run IBM mainframes.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

AIX is kickass!