IBM Falls After Sales in New Business Fail to Impress Bulls

Earnings include $5.5 billion charge due to U.S. tax reform
Company sees revenue growth in 2018 spurred partly by software

Bloomberg Intelligence’s Anurag Rana explains why IBM shares are tumbling despite of the increase in sales.(Source: Bloomberg)

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By Jing Cao

January 18, 2018 at 9:30 PM UTC

Updated on

January 19, 2018 at 12:16 PM UTC

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IBM managed to increase sales for the first time in almost six years, but that growth wasn’t fueled as much by cloud computing and other new products as some analysts had projected, causing shares to tumble.

“The bulls were hoping for a beat on that segment,” said Daniel Ives, chief strategy officer at GBH Insights. Revenue in the newer businesses “missed whisper expectations,” which disappointed the most bullish scenarios, he said.