IBM - International Business Machines Corporation
| Previous Close | 146.43 |
| Open | 146.51 |
| Bid | 141.59 x 800 |
| Ask | 141.71 x 800 |
| Day's Range | 141.27 - 147.05 |
| 52 Week Range | 126.85 - 158.75 |
| Volume | 3,653,731 |
| Avg. Volume | 4,617,806 |
| Market Cap | 122.293B |
| Beta (5Y Monthly) | 1.33 |
| PE Ratio (TTM) | 13.37 |
| EPS (TTM) | 10.57 |
| Earnings Date | Apr 13, 2020 - Apr 19, 2020 |
| Forward Dividend & Yield | 6.48 (4.43%) |
| Ex-Dividend Date | Feb 06, 2020 |
| 1y Target Est | 149.94 |
- Zacks
The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Apple, AT&T, International Business Machines and Microsoft
The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Apple, AT&T, International Business Machines and Microsoft
- Bloomberg
Amazon Adopts Rivals’ Playbook to Fight JEDI Cloud Bid Loss
(Bloomberg) -- A powerful executive with Amazon.com Inc. in October portrayed attempts by archrival Oracle Corp. to block her company from winning one of the biggest-ever government deals as a last-ditch attempt to rescue a business that was becoming irrelevant.Now, Amazon is borrowing a page from the playbook Oracle used to unseat it as the front-runner for an up to $10 billion, 10-year project to overhaul the military’s technological operations.Amazon filed suit in federal court in November after the Pentagon, in a surprise move, on Oct. 25 awarded the contract to Microsoft Corp. Amazon asserted that the procurement was corrupted by the intervention of President Donald Trump, whose disdain for Jeff Bezos, its chairman and chief executive officer, is widely known.“Amazon is going to the mattresses,” said Stan Soloway, a deputy undersecretary of defense under President Bill Clinton and now president of Celero Strategies, a Washington-area consulting firm. “It feels like the same scorched-earth approach” that Oracle took.Earlier, Amazon had sounded a very different note on legal challenges in the government contracts arena. Two days before it lost the award to Microsoft, Teresa Carlson, who oversees government contracting for the company’s profitable cloud-computing unit, Amazon Web Services, derided efforts by Oracle and others to cast the Pentagon’s bidding process as corrupt and rigged in Amazon’s favor.It’s “kind of sad” when losers routinely protest procurement decisions “because it delays innovation,” she told other female corporate leaders, lobbyists and government officials at a Washington conference.Amazon’s combative legal strategy includes seeking Trump’s deposition, which legal experts say is unlikely but not impossible. It hopes to block the Pentagon from putting the cloud project into effect without a new evaluation or award decision.The longer the delay, the more time it has to gather depositions from officials, win over lawmakers, influence public opinion and prevent Microsoft from doing anything on the cloud project that would be hard to reverse. It’s also claiming the Defense Department lowered its standards by choosing Microsoft.Microsoft declined to comment. Oracle didn’t respond to a request for comment. Amazon pointed to earlier statements from company spokesman Drew Herdener who said the contract evaluation was tainted by deficiencies and “unmistakable bias.”The company scored an early win on Feb. 13 when a U.S. Court of Federal Claims judge temporarily blocked Microsoft from working on the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, cloud program while the lawsuit is pending. The order, which is still sealed, says the Pentagon must stop working on the contract “until further order of the court.”The e-commerce giant’s newfound aggressiveness has surprised some observers. The company remained a champion of the project in 2018 and 2019, while Oracle mounted a fierce lobbying and public-relations effort to stop the Pentagon from awarding a sole-source contract. “I didn’t think” they would protest even if they lost, Soloway said.Over the last two years, Oracle has filed -- and lost -- challenges at the Government Accountability Office and the federal claims court. Those efforts resulted in news stories airing its claims of unethical behavior by Pentagon and Amazon officials.Oracle’s audience wasn’t only bureaucrats and judges, but also the White House, lawmakers and the general public, all of which were simultaneously being flooded with revelations about Pentagon employees who worked on the procurement in its early days and then left to work for Amazon.Amazon is similarly seeking common cause with outsiders. Its case so far has attracted briefs from Protect Democracy, an anti-corruption group, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which has sued the Trump administration numerous times for alleged ethics lapses. Both organizations say they haven’t received money from Amazon.Amazon’s court case could help amplify its perspective on the procurement the same way that Oracle’s challenges attracted media attention. “There is also potential in litigation that you are arguing to members of Congress and the public,”said Steven Schooner, a professor of procurement law at George Washington University Law School.The company has been characterizing the loss of the contract as a political, not a technical, decision. Its suit contends that Pentagon officials artificially lowered their evaluation of the company’s proposal and that Trump “launched repeated public and behind-the-scenes attacks to steer the JEDI contract” away from Amazon “to harm his perceived political enemy” -- Bezos.Earlier this month, Jay Carney, Amazon’s top spokesman, told CNBC that the company was taking legal action because it believes that “blatant political interference” affected the award decision. Trump has long criticized Bezos over everything from the shipping rates Amazon pays the U.S. Postal Service to his ownership of the Washington Post.While Oracle charged that Pentagon officials failed to properly investigate ethical issues surrounding the bid, Amazon goes further by arguing that bias cost it the deal. Amazon alleges that the Defense Department, swayed by Trump’s animosity, unfairly judged its bid. It cites passages in a book by the speechwriter to former Defense Secretary James Mattis, stating Trump once told Mattis to “screw Amazon” out of the bid. (Mattis has criticized the book.)“Contracting officers are accused every day of not playing by the rules but rarely that they had a vendetta,” said Charles Tiefer, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law.Microsoft, International Business Machines Corp. and other Amazon rivals at times joined forces with Oracle to try to stop the Pentagon from awarding the cloud contract to a single company, which made Amazon the obvious front-runner.Amazon not only was the market leader in the cloud-server industry, it also had won high-level security clearances from its previous work moving the Central Intelligence Agency’s data to the cloud.The tech companies courted the press and Defense Department cloud-services buyers. The Oracle coalition also descended on Capitol Hill, appealing particularly to members of the Armed Services committees. Some of the lawmakers would later propose curtailing the Pentagon’s funding for the contract until it justified its strategy.Amazon, likewise, in June hired a Trump-connected lobbyist, Jeff Miller, just before Trump disparaged the bidding process as uncompetitive, citing complaints from Oracle, Microsoft and IBM.Oracle’s legal challenges helped Microsoft catch up technologically -- and ultimately win. During the nearly three-year process, Microsoft won new deals with large customers such as Chevron Corp., AT&T Inc. and more than a dozen intelligence agencies that bolstered its standing in the marketplace.Delay Was Microsoft’s AllyMicrosoft, in addition, invested in a portable Azure system to analyze and transfer data to the cloud from the battlefield. The delay also gave Microsoft time to attain a higher level of government security, though it still hasn’t matched Amazon’s top-secret certification.Oracle, too, may have benefited from the delays it continued to engineer even after it was eliminated. Oracle, which sells large amounts of legacy software to the Pentagon, already has a partnership with Microsoft that it could use to win more business from the Defense Department.With much of the fighting between Amazon and Oracle in the rear-view mirror, JEDI’s fate rests with the federal courts. As Amazon waits for the U.S. Court of Federal Claims to decide on its request to depose Trump and Pentagon officials, Oracle is appealing a July ruling that it lacked legal standing to challenge the bidding.“People file these suits for all kinds of reasons,” Tiefer said. “You could argue that one of the things that Amazon wants is a legitimate explanation for why they lost.”\--With assistance from Dina Bass.To contact the reporter on this story: Naomi Nix in Washington at nnix1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net, John HarneyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- TheStreet.com
History of IBM: Timeline and Facts
You may not have thought about IBM in years, but the company probably invented half the technology that got you to work today.
- Bloomberg
E*Trade Brings DNA of Diversity to Morgan Stanley
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- E*Trade Financial Corp. sits at the intersection of two of the world’s most persistent boys’ clubs: Wall Street and Silicon Valley. But behind the layers of computer code that enable at-home investors — another mostly male crowd — to buy and sell stocks online, there’s a group of female tech wizards at E*Trade that make it possible.Fostering a culture that attracts and advances women in the STEM fields is one more way that E*Trade, one of the earliest online brokerages, has been a pioneer in the industry. That little-known trait is something its new corporate parent, Morgan Stanley, would be smart to preserve — and emulate — especially as it looks to reach a wider set of customers. Morgan Stanley agreed on Thursday to acquire E*Trade for $13 billion, fusing together an old-school brokerage business of wealthy Wall Street clients with a digital Main Street brand that resonates with younger people. It’s an opportunity for the white-shoe firm to gain a new type of customer it wasn’t equipped to reach in a corner of the market that’s growing — and one that’s bound to draw more prospective female customers over time. E*Trade had 5.17 million retail accounts as of December and an average of more than 300,000 trades each day. I first learned about E*Trade’s impressive roster of female tech leadership in mid-2018, when I had the pleasure of interviewing them and hearing their stories in the company’s New York office just outside Times Square. They reflected on working their way up in an industry where they initially saw few other female faces, then later a few more, and more yet when they joined E*Trade.Women still head up key teams, such as the innovation lab, run by Jeanne Jang, an alum of International Business Machines Corp. Liensa Vidra has risen up the E*Trade ranks to vice president of product management, and Heather Munoz is senior vice president of tech development, following a career at CME Group Inc. Alice Milligan, who’s made stops at American Express Co. and Citigroup Inc.’s North America consumer bank, was named E*Trade’s chief customer officer last May, overseeing all retail products and how digital customers use them. As with any business, some employees I met have moved on, but the leadership in the chief customer office — the core of E*Trade — is currently 60% female, according to a spokeswoman. That’s almost unheard of in financial services, where it’s hard not to notice that almost all the firms are named after men (Morgan Stanley included). A few of the women I spoke with stressed the importance of informal mentoring — from both male and female leaders — and having it happen organically. Alison Li, a web development manager for whom English is a second language, said that she had never had a female mentor until joining E*Trade and that it brought her out of her shell. “I felt the difference,” she said in our 2018 interview. Diversity helps the intimidation factor of being a woman in fintech fade away, is how Eileen Kane, now vice president of IT project management, put it at the time. Having a father who was an engineer when she was growing up, Kane “never thought this wasn’t a place for women to be,” a message she has since passed on to her children; her 20-year-old daughter is a STEM student. A common sentiment they all shared was wanting to pay it forward for the next crop of female techies. E*Trade might be one of the last places one would expect to find such a bastion of female support and diversity. After all, this is a company that just three years ago advertised its services with a cliche commercial showing a dorky white guy partying on a yacht full of bikini-clad bombshells after becoming rich using E*Trade. Its commercials have since evolved: One of last year’s ads swapped out the dude for an adorable dog on a speedboat; another featured a young woman floating poolside on an Instagrammable swan raft while checking her E*Trade account. Broadly speaking, women, not least because they earn less than men, also invest less. A 2017 survey by Bank of America Merrill Lynch found that while most are confident in budgeting and paying bills, only 52% are confident managing investments, compared with 68% of men. A majority of the female respondents also said that the financial services industry has traditionally catered to men. Funny enough, an abundance of research has shown that women make pretty good investors. They tend to be more cautious, patient, trade less (which saves on fees), are less prone to panic and thus outperform. As I’ve noted before, it’s no wonder that women share these traits with Warren Buffett, the world’s most celebrated investor. Even so, only 10% of fund managers in the U.S. are women, and they tend be put in charge of passive funds, according to consistently depressing but important research done by Morningstar Inc.Corporate America has certainly placed a bigger emphasis on gender diversity and pay equity. But when companies brag about their progress, a closer look will often reveal that female leaders tend to be clustered around public relations and human resources. As important as that work is, those positions don’t put women on course to become the next CEO.That’s why I found E*Trade so refreshing. Women are at the center of the company’s foundation: its technology, the “E” in its 1990s-throwback of a name. Having that diverse perspective and life experience will only help E*Trade and its new parent design products that appeal to a wider group of customers. (I’d be remiss not to mention Ellevest here, a robo-adviser that already specifically targets women and was founded by Sallie Krawcheck, who once ran wealth management at Bank of America and Citi.)James Gorman, chairman and CEO of Morgan Stanley, said he’s considering calling his newly acquired business something along the lines of E*Trade Powered by Morgan Stanley, but that it’d be “completely nuts” to get rid of the E*Trade brand. E*Trade CEO Mike Pizzi isn’t going anywhere either. The bank would do well to keep E*Trade’s culture intact, too.To contact the author of this story: Tara Lachapelle at tlachapelle@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Daniel Niemi at dniemi1@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.Tara Lachapelle is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering the business of entertainment and telecommunications, as well as broader deals. She previously wrote an M&A column for Bloomberg News.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- MarketWatch
Will the shows go on? Coronavirus, MWC cancellation hang over tech conferences
The abandonment of a show as big as Mobile World Congress stings economically for the host city, mobile industry and entrepreneurs from across the globe who attend in hopes of doing deals. And it could just be the beginning.
- Investopedia
The Top 5 IBM Shareholders
Learn more about the largest stakeholders of IBM and the role they have played in the company's growth in the software and cloud computing industries.
- Bloomberg
Amazon Seeks Internal Pentagon Documents in JEDI Cloud Case
(Bloomberg) -- Amazon.com Inc. has asked a court to force the government to hand over documents related to Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s decision to recuse himself from making decisions on a $10 billion cloud-services contract.In a court filing made public on Friday, Amazon seeks a trove of documents to bolster its challenge of the Pentagon’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, cloud contract that was awarded to Microsoft Corp. in October.Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud unit, is also asking the U.S Court of Federal Claims to require the government to turn over materials that shed light on the role that Stacy Cummings, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, played in the procurement.Cummings communicated with the team evaluating JEDI bids and worked on preparations for JEDI-related meetings involving Esper, the lawsuit said. She recused herself from working on the procurement in September 2019, according to the lawsuit.In a previous filing, government lawyers argued that Amazon is “not entitled” to all materials relating to the recusals of Cummings and Esper. They added that Cummings had a conflict with Microsoft, that “did not impact the procurement.”Other files Amazon seeks include “informal notes” between the bid selection team members, JEDI-related content on digital channels and procurement documents that were presented to Esper and Deputy Secretary David Norquist.Representatives for the Defense Department and Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.Amazon filed a lawsuit in November in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims alleging that the Defense Department failed to fairly judge its bid because President Donald Trump viewed Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos as his “political enemy.”Amazon asked the court earlier this month to allow it to question Trump, Esper, former Defense Secretary James Mattis, and Dana Deasy, the Pentagon’s chief information officer.In August 2019, the newly confirmed Esper ordered a review of the procurement after Trump endorsed criticism that the Pentagon had given Amazon an unfair advantage with the contract’s design.The Pentagon announced in October that Esper would recuse himself from any decisions involving the contract to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. Esper’s son worked as a consultant for International Business Machines Corp., which along with Oracle Corp., had earlier been eliminated from the competition.Three days after Esper’s recusal, the Pentagon announced it had chosen Microsoft, an upset victory for the company that many in the industry viewed as a distant second to Amazon.“A complete factual record on the bases for these recusals is especially critical in light of the well-grounded allegations AWS has made about the troubling circumstances surrounding the recusals of DoD personnel,” the lawsuit said.The Pentagon’s JEDI project is designed to consolidate the department’s cloud computing infrastructure and modernize its technology systems. Earlier this month, a judge agreed to block Microsoft from working on the contract while Amazon’s lawsuit is being litigated.To contact the reporter on this story: Naomi Nix in Washington at nnix1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net, Paula DwyerFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
- InvestorPlace
4 Top Stock Trades for Monday: WORK, GLD, DE, DBX
Stocks are under pressure on Friday, falling as coronavirus worries continue to weigh on equities and drive up safe-haven plays. That said, here's a look at some top stock trades for next week. Top Stock Trades for Tomorrow No. 1: Slack (WORK) Click to Enlarge Source: Chart courtesy of StockCharts.comSlack (NYSE:WORK) is up more than 2% on the day, despite jumping more than 6% in pre-market trading on reports that Uber (NYSE:UBER) will move all of its employees onto the platform. WORK has had momentum after similar reports of IBM (NYSE:IBM) doing the same thing earlier this month.Slack's rally drew in sellers on Friday, but the stock is still looking better overall. Earlier this month, Slack broke out over the 100-day moving average, then held this mark as support on a pullback.InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading TipsA few days later, it pushed above the $26 IPO price. Now, investors want to see it hold up above the $26 to $27 area. Above keeps Friday's high of day and $30-plus on the table. * 10 S&P 500 Stocks to Buy Increasing Their Dividends in 2020 Below this area and the 20-day moving average, though, and the 50-day and 100-day moving averages are on the table, with both near $23. Top Stock Trades for Tomorrow No. 2: Gold ETF (GLD) Click to Enlarge Source: Chart courtesy of StockCharts.comThe SPDR Gold Trust ETF (NYSEARCA:GLD) remains red hot, as investors continue the flight-to-safety trade even as equities have done well the last few months.With Friday's gap up, the GLD is hitting new 52-week highs, while sporting an overbought condition on the relative strength index (RSI). The move caps six straight sessions with a gain, as GLD broke out over $150 this week.Just because shares are overbought, doesn't mean the stock can't run higher possibly to $160. However, investors may prefer to wait for a dip. Preferably, a drop down to the $150 breakout mark will be met with support -- a strong sign that bulls are still in control.It would also be attractive to see the 20-day moving average hold as support. Below both measures puts the 50-day moving average on the table. Top Stock Trades for Tomorrow No. 3: Deere (DE) Click to Enlarge Source: Chart courtesy of StockCharts.comShares of Deere (NYSE:DE) are hitting new annual highs on Friday, after surprisingly better-than-expected quarterly results. The stock is pushing through recent resistance near $177, but struggling to hold its gains above this mark.Above resistance puts a move up to $185-plus on the table. However, failure to close over resistance keeps downside levels in the realm of possibilities too.That would first put the 10-week moving average on the table near $172, followed by a slightly deeper dip down to the $161 to $163 area. There, Deere will find the 50-week moving average and uptrend support (blue line).After such a favorable reaction to earnings, I wouldn't normally look for such a pullback. But when considering current resistance along with the possibility of a larger market correction, these downside marks become possible. * 3 Wild Stocks To Wrangle In This Bullish Market Overall, just stay open-minded and flexible. Let price be the guide, not opinion. Top Stock Trades for Tomorrow No. 4: Dropbox (DBX) Click to Enlarge Source: Chart courtesy of StockCharts.comBucking the trend on Friday is Dropbox (NASDAQ:DBX), which is up 23% at one point after reporting earnings.The charts for this one are really interesting. With the move, shares are ripping through the 20-week moving average -- which roughly translates to the 100-day moving average. This measure has been resistance for several months now, stymieing each rally in DBX stock.Furthermore, the stock burst through the 50-week moving average and long-term downtrend resistance (blue line). One measure many investors are surely not considering is the newly established 100-week moving average, which just came into play at $23.76. Guess what Friday's high is so far? DBX came within 4 cents of that mark.On the upside, the 100-week moving average is now the mark to clear for more upside. If it can, $26 is on the table. On the downside, though, see that $20 to $21 holds as support. $21 is the IPO price for Dropbox, while this area also marks the 50-week moving average and backside of prior downtrend resistance.The chart for DBX is my favorite from this week, purely from a technical perspective. However, that doesn't mean it's the best buy or anything like that. Just pure technicals that make it a fun one to study.Bret Kenwell is the manager and author of Future Blue Chips and is on Twitter @BretKenwell. As of this writing, Bret Kenwell did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities. More From InvestorPlace * 2 Toxic Pot Stocks You Should Avoid * 10 S&P 500 Stocks to Buy Increasing Their Dividends in 2020 * 5 Tech Stocks Vying to Win the AR/VR Race * 7 U.S. Stocks to Buy on Coronavirus Weakness The post 4 Top Stock Trades for Monday: WORK, GLD, DE, DBX appeared first on InvestorPlace.
- Reuters
Verizon withdraws from RSA conference on coronavirus concerns
Verizon Communications Inc has pulled out of the RSA cyber security conference due to coronavirus-related concerns, the organizer said https://www.rsaconference.com/novel-coronavirus-update on Friday. RSA also said that AT&T Cybersecurity will not participate in the conference, taking the total number of companies that have pulled out to fourteen. Last week, International Business Machines Corp also withdrew from the conference on similar concerns.
- Zacks
The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Microsoft, Netflix, Adobe, International Business Machines and Apple
The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Microsoft, Netflix, Adobe, International Business Machines and Apple
- InvestorPlace
IBM Stock Is an Underappreciated Tech Play
For many years, technology icon IBM (NYSE:IBM) has offered investors a perplexing look. Although "Big Blue" has all the right components to theoretically make a charge at the coming wave of innovations, IBM stock has floundered. Essentially, the whole is less than the sum of its parts. Yet I believe this dead money investment is finally turning around.Source: JHVEPhoto / Shutterstock.com I'm not alone in my bullish assessment of IBM stock. Recently, the tech giant announced that Ginni Rometty is stepping down from her CEO role. A controversial figure on the Street, Rometty hasn't exactly appeased investors. When she took over the reins in January 2012, Big Blue's shares were streaking toward $200; indeed, IBM hit this threshold multiple times early on in her tenure at the top.However, Rometty couldn't generate much excitement and credibility toward the company's shift toward relevant markets like cloud computing. Instead, IBM steadily faded into the background. At one point, the organization recorded 22 straight quarters of declining revenue.InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading TipsThus, it's no surprise that IBM stock popped on the announcement of her departure. Since the spring season of 2013, shares have been mired in an ugly bearish trend channel.At the same time, I don't think it's fair to dump all of IBM's problems on Rometty. When she assumed control, the company had basically maxed out the capacity of its legacy businesses. Competitors like Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG, NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) were busy making inroads to the cloud as opposed to on-premise software platforms.To catch up, Rometty pushed for pertinent acquisitions, most notably the $34 billion Red Hat deal. Unfortunately for her, investors' patience simply ran out before the implied narrative could come to fruition. Synergies Are What Makes IBM Stock CompellingStill, that doesn't mean that the IBM stock of today will follow the same path of years ago. With most of the weak hands flushed out of the name, this perennial dinosaur can finally gain traction.Earlier, I mentioned that the many acquisitions that the company made failed to spark meaningful growth. Worse, with revenue declines and a pessimistic outlook, Rometty was on borrowed time. Nevertheless, she did what she had to do. Irrespective of the results, today, IBM is in a much better position to leverage tomorrow's lucrative markets.First, relatively few folks are giving Big Blue the credit it deserves regarding its long-term cloud strategy. In an email to InvestorPlace.com, IBM corporation communications representative Tim Davidson noted that "for several years, industry analysts (Gartner, Synergy, Canalys) have been including Google as a Top 3 cloud provider alongside AWS and Microsoft, without having any sense of Google's actual cloud revenue (since it was never reported)."But in Alphabet's latest fourth-quarter report, it revealed full-year 2019 cloud revenue. It turned out that "IBM's cloud revenue for 2019 was more than 2X Google's cloud revenue." Therefore, just on a mano-y-mano comparison, the company is making serious progress, yet this is not fully reflected in the IBM stock price.More importantly, IBM has an advantage where others are lacking: synergy. In addition to the cloud expertise inherent in the Red Hat deal, IBM has extensive acumen in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. Therefore, the organization is able to offer comprehensive solutions to high-margin enterprise-level customers.And that was really the point of Big Blue's acquisitive strategy. In order to compete in tomorrow's technology marketplace, they had to endure several growing seasons. It just happened that the clock ran out on Rometty. Setting Up a Contrarian OpportunityOn paper, the bullish thesis runs counter to the fundamentals. Initially, IBM stock appears a great value play thanks to its 14x multiple. However, with consensus earnings per share estimated to grow only 4.4% in 2020, and with sales projected to grow only 2.3% over the same period, IBM seems destined for mediocrity.But this is where you got to think like a contrarian. Much of the bearishness has already been reflected in IBM stock: nearly the entire tenure of Rometty was a giant downtrend. However, she managed to bring all the necessary tools together. As I mentioned above, those tools have generated significant traction. Now, we just need management to do their part.The shakeup at the top offers hope. Rometty's replacement is Arvind Krishna, who previously served as the senior vice president for cloud and cognitive software. Further, Krishna was instrumental in another area of IBM's acquisition rollout -- the blockchain.As you know, blockchain technology has very powerful applications toward transactional integrity and security, among many other uses. It's an area that enterprise-level customers will benefit form and at lower costs due to the blockchain platform's scalability.Therefore, this is not the time to cast doubt on IBM stock. Rather, shares are just getting interesting.Matthew McCall left Wall Street to actually help investors -- by getting them into the world's biggest, most revolutionary trends BEFORE anyone else. The power of being "first" gave Matt's readers the chance to bank +2,438% in Stamps.com (STMP), +1,523% in Ulta Beauty (ULTA) and +1,044% in Tesla (TSLA), just to name a few. Click here to see what Matt has up his sleeve now. Matt does not directly own the aforementioned securities. More From InvestorPlace * 2 Toxic Pot Stocks You Should Avoid * 7 Failing Tech Stocks to Disconnect From Now * 5 Ideal Dividend Stocks for New Investors * 4 Stocks to Buy No Matter Who Wins the 2020 Election The post IBM Stock Is an Underappreciated Tech Play appeared first on InvestorPlace.
- Zacks
IBM (IBM) Up 4.8% Since Last Earnings Report: Can It Continue?
IBM (IBM) reported earnings 30 days ago. What's next for the stock? We take a look at earnings estimates for some clues.
- Zacks
Has International Business Machines (IBM) Outpaced Other Computer and Technology Stocks This Year?
Is (IBM) Outperforming Other Computer and Technology Stocks This Year?
- Zacks
The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Microsoft, International Business Machines, Intel, Apple and Amazon.com
The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Microsoft, International Business Machines, Intel, Apple and Amazon.com
- PR Newswire
Centotrenta Servicing redefines credit securitization management with IBM Blockchain Platform
IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Centotrenta Servicing announce the HyperMast STS platform, an end to end credit securitization management platform based on IBM blockchain technology designed to address financial sector requirements for their clients including data quality, process security, flow traceability, and the reduction of processing time and paper-based processes.
- Zacks
3 Cloud Computing & Big Data Stocks for Tech Investors to Buy Right Now
The big data and cloud computing space is set to play a key part in the continued tech revolution. We found three big data and cloud stocks that investors might want to buy right now...
- American City Business Journals
Coronavirus scares away Platinum Sponsor of Moscone’s RSA Conference
Less than two weeks before the massive cybersecurity convention is set to begin, a Fortune 500 tech titan pulls out.
- PR Newswire
IBM Power Systems Certified for SAP HANA® Enterprise Cloud as a provider for large SAP HANA systems
IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that IBM Power Systems has been certified for the SAP HANA® Enterprise Cloud as a critical infrastructure platform provider for large SAP HANA systems, aiming to simplify the IT infrastructure for the managed, private cloud environment. The service will run on IBM POWER9-based IBM Power Systems E980 servers, which have the industry's largest virtualized server scalability of 24TB for the SAP HANA databasei.
- Bloomberg
Edison, Morse ... Watson? AI Poses Test of Who’s an Inventor
(Bloomberg) -- Computers using artificial intelligence are discovering medicines, designing better golf clubs and creating video games.But are they inventors?Patent offices around the world are grappling with the question of who -- if anyone -- owns innovations developed using AI. The answer may upend what’s eligible for protection and who profits as AI transforms entire industries.“There are machines right now that are doing far more on their own than to help an engineer or a scientist or an inventor do their jobs,” said Andrei Iancu, director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. “We will get to a point where a court or legislature will say the human being is so disengaged, so many levels removed, that the actual human did not contribute to the inventive concept.”U.S. law says only humans can obtain patents, Iancu said. That’s why the patent office has been collecting comments on how to deal with inventions created through artificial intelligence and is expected to release a policy paper this year. Likewise, the World Intellectual Property Office, an agency within the United Nations, along with patent and copyright agencies around the world are also trying to figure out whether current laws or practices need to be revised for AI inventions.The debate comes as some of the largest global technology companies look to monetize massive investments in AI. Google’s chief executive officer, Sundar Pichai, has described AI as “more profound than fire or electricity.” Microsoft Corp. has invested $1 billion in the research company Open AI. Both companies have thousands of employees and researchers pushing to advance the state of the art and move AI innovations into products.International Business Machines Corp.’s supercomputer Watson is working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a research lab to develop new applications of AI in different industries, and some of China’s biggest companies are giving American companies a run for their money in the field.The European Patent Office last month rejected applications by the owner of an AI “creativity machine” named Dabus, saying that there is a “clear legislative understanding that the inventor is a natural person.” In December, the U.K. Intellectual Property Office turned down similar petitions, noting AI was never contemplated when the law was written.“Increasingly, Fortune 100 companies have AI doing more and more autonomously and they’re not sure if they can find someone who would qualify as an inventor,” said Ryan Abbott, a law professor at the University of Surrey in England. “If you can’t get protection, people may not want to use AI to do these things.”Abbott and Stephen Thaler, founder of St. Louis-based Imagination Engines Inc., filed patent applications in numerous countries for a food container and a “device for attracting enhanced attention,” listing Thaler’s machine Dabus as the inventor.The goal, Abbott said, was to force patent offices to confront the issue. He advocates listing the computer that did the work as the inventor, with the business that owns the machine also owning any patent. It would ensure that companies can get a return on their investment, and maintain a level of honesty about whether it’s a machine or a human that’s doing the work, he said.Businesses “don’t really care who’s listed as an inventor but they do care if they can get a patent,” Abbott said. “We really didn’t design the law with this in mind, so what do we want to do about it?”Still, to many AI experts and researchers, the field is nowhere near advanced enough to consider the idea of an algorithm as an inventor.‘Just Computer Tools’“Listing an AI system as a co-inventor seems like a gimmick rather than a requirement,” said Oren Etzioni, head of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Seattle. “We often use computers as critical tools in generating patentable technology, but we don’t list our tools as co-inventors. AI systems don’t have intellectual property rights -- they are just computer tools.”The current state of the art in AI should put this question off for a long time, said Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, who suggested the debate might be more appropriate in a “century or two.” Researchers are “very far from artificial general intelligence like ‘The Terminator’.”It’s not just who’s listed as the inventor that is flummoxing patent agencies.Software thus far can’t follow the scientific method -- independently developing a hypothesis and then conducting tests to prove or disprove it. Instead, AI is more often used for “brute force,” where it would simply “churn through a bunch of possibilities and see what works,” said Dana Rao, general counsel for Adobe Inc.Human v. Machine“The question is not ‘Can a machine be an inventor?’ it’s ‘Can a machine invent?”’ Rao said. “It can’t in the traditional way we view invention.”A patent is awarded to something that is “new, useful and non-obvious.” Often, that means figuring out what a person with “ordinary skill” in the field would understand to be new -- for instance, a knowledgeable laboratory researcher. That analysis gets skewed when courts and patent offices have to compare the work of a software program that can analyze an exponentially greater number of options than even a large team of human researchers.“The bar is changing when you use AI,” said Kate Gaudry, a patent lawyer with Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton in Washington. “However this is decided, we have to be consistent.”Iancu likened it to debates a century ago over awarding copyrights to photographs taken with a camera.“Somebody must have created the machine, somebody must have trained the machine and somebody must have pushed the ‘on’ button,” he said. “Do we think those activities are enough to count as human contributions to the invention process? If yes, the current law is enough.”Still, Rao said, there needs to be some way to help companies using AI to protect their ideas. That’s particularly true for copyrights on photographs created through a type of machine learning systems known as Generative Adversarial Networks.“If I want to create images to sell them, there needs to be ways of determining ownership,” Rao said.Abbott said one option would be similar to U.K. law where computer-generated artistic works are given a shorter copyright term than those created by a human. The U.S. requires copyright owners to be human, and famously denied a registration request on behalf a macaque monkey that had taken a “selfie” with a British nature photographer’s camera.The evolution of machine learning and neural networks means that, at some point, the role of humans in certain types of innovation will decrease. In those cases, who will own the inventions is a question that’s critical to companies using AI to develop new products.Iancu said he sees AI as full of promise, and notes that agencies have had to address such weighty questions before, such as genetically modified animals created in a lab, complex mathematics use for cryptography and synthetic DNA.“It’s one of these things where hopefully, the various jurisdictions around the world can discuss these issues before it’s too late, before we have to play catch up,” Iancu said.(Updates with copyright issues in fourth paragraph from the bottom.)To contact the reporters on this story: Susan Decker in Washington at sdecker1@bloomberg.net;Dina Bass in Seattle at dbass2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net, ;Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth WassermanFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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Amazon Denies Unfair Advantage in Oracle Challenge of JEDI
(Bloomberg) -- Amazon.com Inc. is denying a Pentagon cloud-computing contract valued at as much as $10 billion was unfairly tailored for the e-commerce giant.In a court filing made public Monday, Amazon countered rival Oracle Corp.’s claims that bidding for the lucrative cloud deal was tainted by relationships between its employees and former Pentagon officials.Oracle is appealing a July ruling from the U.S. Court of Federal Claims that dismissed its legal challenge of the cloud contract based on claims that the bidding violated procurement law and was marred by conflicts of interest. Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud unit, has filed a separate lawsuit challenging its loss of the contract known as Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, which was awarded to Microsoft Corp. in October. Amazon claims it lost the bid after interference from the White House and is seeking to interview President Donald Trump in that case.Oracle’s lawsuit claims that Amazon offered two former Pentagon employees jobs at the company while they were working on the contract. In one case, Deap Ubhi, who had worked at Amazon before joining the government, allegedly helped craft the JEDI procurement for weeks after accepting a job offer in October 2017 from AWS, according to the lawsuit.Amazon argued that Oracle’s lawsuit is based on “suspicion and innuendo” and that neither employee that Amazon hired disclosed any “competitively useful” information to the company. Government lawyers have also argued in court that the employees’ input on the JEDI procurement was minimal.Representatives for the Pentagon and Oracle didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.The U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled in July that the Pentagon’s contracting officer properly determined the relationships had no adverse impact on the integrity of the acquisition process and that Oracle didn’t have standing to challenge the contract. The Pentagon eliminated Oracle and International Business Machines Corp. from the competition in April 2019.Last week a federal judge temporarily blocked Microsoft from working on the Pentagon cloud project while Amazon’s lawsuit is litigated. The Pentagon’s JEDI project is designed to consolidate the department’s cloud computing infrastructure and modernize its technology systems. The contract is worth as much as $10 billion over a decade.To contact the reporter on this story: Naomi Nix in Washington at nnix1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth WassermanFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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