Good fit for IBM

Article Excerpt

IBM $210.51 (New York symbol IBM; Shares outstanding: 1.1 billion; Market cap: $231.6 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 1.7%) continues to expand its software business. In the latest quarter, software accounted for 24% of its total revenue and 43% of its pre-tax earnings. The company recently paid an undisclosed sum for U.K.-based Butterfly Software Ltd. Businesses use this private firm’s software to collect data from older computers and securely transfer it to remote servers. Butterfly’s products nicely complement IBM’s growing analytics software operations, which help companies quickly gather and analyze a wide range of information. IBM is still a buy. buy…