Good time to buy IBM

Article Excerpt

IBM $180.15 (New York symbol IBM; Shares outstanding: 1.1 billion; Market cap: $199.5 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 2.2%; www.ibm.com) has reported better-than-expected earnings for its latest quarter. However, concerns over its declining revenue caused the stock to fall. In the three months ended September 30, 2013, IBM’s earnings per share before one-time items rose 10.2%, to $3.99 from $3.62. However, revenue fell 4.1%, to $23.7 billion from $24.7 billion, mainly due to weaker sales in Asia. Demand for IBM’s analytics software, which helps businesses analyze large amounts of data and improve their efficiency, remains strong. The company expects software to supply 50% of its total revenue by 2015. However, sales of mainframe computers fell 16.6%. The company continues to make progress on its plan to cut around 2% of its workforce. Thanks to the resulting savings, IBM still expects to earn $16.90 a share for all of 2013. The stock trades at just 10.7 times that estimate…