Lou Gerstner wrote, "People truly do what you inspect, not what you expect." … Lest we forget, "inspection pages" such as these exist because chief executives are "people" too.
Arvind Krishna: 2020 through 2025 Revenue and Profit Growth
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Date Published: April 11, 2022
Date Modified: April 2, 2026 |
Arvind Krishna's 2020 through 2025 Revenue and Profit Growth Performance
- The Importance of Revenue and Profit Growth
- Arvind Krishna: IBM's 2020 through 2025 Revenue Growth Numbers
- Arvind Krishna: IBM's 2020 through 2025 Profit Growth Numbers
The Importance of Revenue and Profit Growth
Although the previous revenue and profitability charts documented Arvind Krishna's two critical revenue and profitability metrics, the following charts analyze their respective year-over-year growth rates. They present a case that a corporation can pad short-term profitability numbers through financial engineering or aggressive bookkeeping, but that sales performance is much harder to game.
These charts show revenue growth is a serious problem, and that profit growth has been propped up with some serious financial engineering—following short-term, financially expedient paths at the expense of the long-term health of the business. These charts challenge the perspective that IBM has been divesting and investing to move into higher-value, more-profitable markets, because if it was, IBM's customers would be buying into the corporation's newest solutions as the products return ever-higher value to their businesses.
These charts show revenue growth is a serious problem, and that profit growth has been propped up with some serious financial engineering—following short-term, financially expedient paths at the expense of the long-term health of the business. These charts challenge the perspective that IBM has been divesting and investing to move into higher-value, more-profitable markets, because if it was, IBM's customers would be buying into the corporation's newest solutions as the products return ever-higher value to their businesses.
The 1999 through 2025 IBM profit growth chart below documents a few of the financial engineering “projects” the corner office implemented through their financial and human resource divisions: workforce rebalancing, resource actions, divestiture of critical assets, and employee benefit reductions. This is critical to highlight because these are unsustainable processes that can provide one-time, short-term profit spikes but can also drive long-term negative consequences for a corporation. As can be seen in these profit growth charts below, some of these activities—like the divestiture of the x86 Server Division—had an almost immediate negative growth consequence which has never been highlighted in the press. Many of these highlighted activities to prop up short-term profits are causing a long-term downward trend in employee revenue and profit productivity
Employee productivity metrics are covered in the next key metrics category, which also seems to need more discussion within the press and more in-depth, long-term research by the analyst communities.
Employee productivity metrics are covered in the next key metrics category, which also seems to need more discussion within the press and more in-depth, long-term research by the analyst communities.
Evaluating IBM's 2020 to 2025 Revenue and Profit Growth Numbers
What were Arvind Krishna's sixth-year 2020 through 2025 revenue and profit growth performance numbers?
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Unfortunately, even considering the Kyndryl divestiture in the numbers below, when IBM's revenue growth has been positive in the five out of the six years, the rate of inflation has been higher in four of the five positive revenue growth years:
Only one word can be applied to IBM's profit growth of the last five year's leadership under Arvind Krishna: unpredictable. In his defense, as the 1999 through 2025 charts below show, this is a trademark of IBM's 21st Century Chief Executive Officers. Arvind Krishna's style of leadership is just more of the same lack of consistency in profit growth.
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Inflation is a concern
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Arvind Krishna: IBM's 2020 through 2025 Revenue Growth Numbers
- Krishna 2020 through 2025 Revenue Growth
- IBM’s 2025 Revenue Growth under Arvind Krishna’s leadership was down -4.6% in 2020 (allowing for the Kyndryl divestiture), up 3.9% in 2021 (allowing for the Kyndryl divestiture); up 5.5% in 2022: up 2.2% in 2023, up 1.4% in 2024, and up 7.6% in 2025. Unfortunately, inflation has been higher than the corporation’s revenue growth in four of the five years of its positive revenue growth: inflation was 4.7% in 2021 vs. revenue growth of 3.9%; inflation was 8.0% in 2022 vs. revenue growth of 5.5%; inflation was 4.1% in 2023 vs. revenue growth of 2.2%; and inflation was 2.9% in 2024 vs. revenue growth of 1.4%.
- Krishna & Rometty 2011 through 2025 Revenue Growth
- IBM Revenue Growth from 2011 through 2025 as presented in the following revenue-growth, bar chart is not a pretty picture. IBM's annual revenue growth was only positive six out of the last fourteen years, and in four of the last five years (2021 through 2025) when it was positive the rate of inflation was higher than IBM's revenue growth.
- Krishna, Rometty, Palmisano & Gerstner 1999 through 2025 Revenue Growth
- IBM Revenue Growth in this twenty-first-century chart is a picture of inconsistency. Annual revenue growth was negative twelve out of the last twenty-six years. In four of the last five years (2021 through 2025) inflation exceeded IBM's best-case revenue growth. So, considering inflation, it is easy to add a footnote to this chart that states: "Considering inflation IBM has had negative revenue growth in sixteen out of the last twenty-six years."
Arvind Krishna: IBM's 2020 through 2025 Profit Growth Numbers
- Krishna 2020 through 2025 Profit Growth
- IBM’s 2025 Profit Growth under Arvind Krishna’s leadership was up 75.9% in 2025. In the four previous years, IBM’s profit growth was down -40.7% in 2020, up 2.7% in 2021, up 6.5% in 2022, up 22.6% in 2023, and down -19.7% in 2024.
- Krishna & Rometty 2011 through 2025 Profit Growth
- IBM Net Income or Profit Growth was down six years and up eight years. Considering inflation, profit growth was down eight years and up six years. This seesaw picture of inconsistent profit growth combined with the lack-of-revenue-growth chart above should cause any analyst to question the corner offices' on-going premise that they are focusing on building products of higher value that are in demand by their customers.
- Krishna, Rometty, Palmisano & Gerstner 1999 through 2025 Profit Growth
- IBM Net Income or Profit Growth was supported in the first decade of the twenty-first century by financial engineering and aggressive bookkeeping as discussed above. These tactics appear to have reached their limits in the 2011-2012 timeframe. It is at this point that IBM's profit growth under Virginia (Ginni) M. Rometty and Arvind Krishna bounces between the red and the black (shown in blue on the chart) from year to year.
