IBM spins off Kyndryl

Article Excerpt

IBM, $116.92, is still a buy. The company (New York symbol IBM; Shares outstanding: 896.8 million; Market cap: $105.0 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 5.6%) has now completed the spinoff of the Managed Infrastructure Services unit of its Global Technology Services operations. That legacy business helps corporate and government clients manage their datacentres. The new firm is called Kyndryl Holdings Inc., $15.75, New York symbol KD. Investors got one Kyndryl share for every five IBM shares. IBM still holds 19.9% of Kyndryl’s shares. It plans to dispose of them within the next 12 months. The split will let IBM focus on its faster-growing cloud computing and analytics software operations. Kyndryl should also benefit, as it can now use a variety of hardware suppliers in addition to IBM. Demand for its services should also improve as more businesses collect, store and analyze a wider array of customer and other data. We’ll say more about Kyndryl as more information becomes available. For now, it’s a hold. IBM remains a..