24/7 Wall St.

International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) is on deck to report its fourth-quarter earnings after the markets close on Thursday. While there is a lot of focus on IBM’s earnings and revenues, investors may have to weigh many other issues equally or even more than the actual earnings report on a simple “meet, beat or miss” basis that other companies are usually judged by.

The consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters are $5.17 in EPS and $22.05 billion in revenue. In the fourth quarter of last year, the company reportedly had EPS of $5.01 and $21.77 billion in revenue. What matters here is that if IBM’s revenues match or beat estimates, it will break a multiyear slide in quarterly revenues on a year-over-year basis. If that occurs, it may change how IBM is reported on by the media and how it is viewed by investors going forward.

If IBM offers up 2018 guidance, the $78.63 billion in revenues of 2017 would go up to $78.81 billion in 2018. And the expected EPS of $13.81 in 2017 would grow to $13.92. IBM may disclose charges tied to repatriation, as it has a place among the 16 companies with a total of $1 trillion cash.

It is no secret whatsoever that Big Blue has continued to disappoint with earnings over and over, as its core IT services business has not been overcome by IBM’s strategic imperatives of cloud, artificial intelligence, machine learning and other growth segments. Blockchain represents a huge opportunity for IBM. Big stock buybacks and increased dividends have also only yielded so much, considering how much IBM has underperformed against other U.S. technology giants. IBM shares are down slightly over a five-year trailing period, versus a 90% gain in the Dow Jones Industrial Average during that time.

IBM’s disappointment continued in 2017. The stock was only expected to generate a return of −2.2% for all of 2017 using its bull/bear analysis at the start of last year, but its return of −7.6% was even less impressive.

Another consideration for investors is recent and likely management changes. 24/7 Wall St. has been rather critical of the reign of CEO Ginni Rometty, and the stock performance alone should merit more than simple questions about how and why IBM’s board of directors approved such a large bonus for her in 2017. In the past five years, IBM had a high above $210 a share at the start of 2013, and it hit a low of $125 in early 2016. Rometty was included in the list of the 20 worst CEOs of 2017.

On top of the CEO issue at IBM, the company just named a new chief financial officer. The timing of the news was unusual, and it was given very little coverage relative to what the longer-term and near-term implications may be. James Kavanaugh was named as the new CFO, replacing Martin Schroeter who is taking a new role as IBM’s senior vice president of global markets.

Another big issue that may cloud IBM’s earnings and guidance are pending and current layoffs, which may not be represented and may not be traditional layoffs. While Rometty had previously pledged to hire 25,000 U.S. workers in the years ahead, there have been reports in 2018 that IBM will “redeploy” up to 30,000 workers. Whether that is a reassigned job in a new location, a layoff or a change in a local job description is yet to be seen. If this occurs, it’s going to happen in IBM’s global technology services unit — and many of those jobs are still high paying but are deemed less valuable in the two decades ahead versus the two decades behind.

It also remains questionable whether IBM will really win under tax reform. While the United States had a nominal corporate tax rate of 35% and that rate is dropping to 21%, here is what IBM listed as its rate along with third-quarter earnings: effective GAAP and operating tax rates were 11.0% and 14.7%, respectively, and IBM said then that it expected a full-year effective operating (non-GAAP) tax rate of 15% (plus or minus three points, and excluding discrete items).

On January 17, IBM was given one of the top analyst upgrades it has seen in some time. Barclays raised it to Overweight from Underweight in a rare two-notch upgrade, and it was called a new dawn for IBM. The price target was raised all the way up to $192 from $133. What stood out here was that Barclays said it believes an upbeat mainframe cycle is coming and that IBM’s long revenue decline is about to end. IBM closed up almost 3% at $168.65 after that big upgrade.

On January 18, Wedbush Securities maintained its Neutral rating, but the firm raised its price target on Big Blue to $185 from $155. While that hike was impressive, Wedbush’s bottom line is that IBM remains in “work-in-progress” mode as it continues to convert its revenue base away from its legacy IT services business into a more slender digital solutions model. The long and short of the matter is that the existing model is high in labor, costs and assets and the future is not.

Other analysts also recently weighed in on IBM in the weeks ahead of the earnings report:

• Societe Generale has a Sell rating and a $152 price target.
• BMO Capital Markets has a Hold rating with a $175 price target.
• RBC raised its rating to Outperform with a $180 target.

24/7 Wall St. has also featured how IBM has to be among top tech laggards for the Dow gains to continue in 2018. Merrill Lynch even considers IBM as a cheap value stock.

Shares of IBM traded up about $1.20 at $169.66 on Thursday morning. The consensus price target has now climbed to $168.45, almost $5.00 higher than at the end of December, and IBM has a 52-week trading range of $139.13 to $182.79.

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