INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORP. $193 (New York symbol IBM, Conservative Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 1.0 billion; Market cap: $193.0 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.2; Dividend yield: 2.0%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.ibm.com) continues to expand its cloud-computing businesses.
It recently paid an undisclosed sum for Cloudant, a private firm that creates large databases on remote servers. IBM feels Cloudant’s technology will also enhance its analytics services, which help businesses analyze large amounts of data and improve their efficiency.
The company expects its cloud revenue to reach $7 billion in 2015. That’s equal to 7% of its overall 2013 revenue of $99.8 billion.
IBM is a buy.