Topic: Blue Chip Stocks

IBM $152.51

IBM $152.51 (New York symbol IBM; Shares outstanding: 960.9 million; Market cap: $147.6 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 3.7%; www.ibm.com) continues to shift away from mainframes and computer consulting services to faster-growing areas like cloud computing and analytics software.

As part of that change, IBM is developing software to analyze data from the IoT—Internet of Things.

By 2020, the IoT could connect over 30 billion devices to the Internet—from automobiles to home thermostats and appliances.

Meantime, in the three months ended March 31, 2016, revenue from IBM’s cloud, IoT software and other new businesses was $7.0 billion. It rose 17% from $6.0 billion a year earlier. These operations now contribute 37% of total revenue. That’s up from 31%.

However, weaker demand for IBM’s traditional products caused the company’s overall revenue to fall 4.6% in the quarter, to $18.7 billion from $19.6 billion a year earlier.

The high U.S. dollar also hurt the contribution of its overseas operations. IBM gets 60% of its sales from outside of the U.S.

Per-share earnings for the quarter fell 19.2%, to $2.35 from $2.91. That beat the consensus of $2.09.

IBM will probably earn $13.50 a share in 2016, and the stock trades at just 11.3 times that forecast.

IBM is a buy.

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