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 Performance
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Date Published: April 11, 2022
Date Modified: April 2, 2026 |
Arvind Krishna's 2020 through 2025 Revenue and Profit Performance
- The Importance of Revenue and Profit
- Arvind Krishna: IBM's 2020 through 2025 Revenue Numbers
- Arvind Krishna: IBM's 2020 through 2025 Net Income/Profit Numbers
The Importance of Revenue and Profit to a Corporation's Stakeholders
A worthless car is one that can’t move passengers or cargo between points "A" and "B" safely and reliably. [Link to "The Importance of Sales Productivity" on this website] Corporations, within a capitalist economy, lose value as they fail in their main purpose: moving products of competitively higher value off the showroom floor into a customer’s hands while generating enough profits to ensure a self-sustaining stakeholder ecosystem—enough money to invest equitably between customers, employees, shareholders, and their supportive societies.
In this respect the following charts show that the 21st Century IBM has been failing to deliver products of higher value to its customers. Selling continuously-improving, higher-quality products at a profit is, ultimately, the responsibility of the corner office. These charts reflect what should be the two top priorities . . . and responsibilities of the corner office. Long-term, sustainable and consistently improving revenue and profits should be the chief executive’s top performance metrics. Special emphasis should be placed on the revenue metrics as this metric is extremely hard to financially engineer, while profit metrics—as shown below, can be engineered through such tactics as workload rebalancing, pension plan changes and divestitures/acquisitions.
Arvind Krishna: IBM's 2020 through 2025 Revenue Numbers
- Arvind Krishna 2020 through 2025 Revenue Performance
- Over the last five years IBM yearly revenue: fell $3.5 billion in 2020, fell $16.3 billion in 2021, rose $3.1 billion in 2022, rose $1.3 billion in 2023, rose a meager .893 billion in 2024, and, finally, rose $4.8 billion in 2025.
- IBM’s Yearly Revenue after Arvind Krishna’s six years of leadership is down $9.6 billion since the end of 2019. IBM's overall 2025 revenue performance of $67.5 billion is a 12.5% decline in yearly revenue from the $77-billion corporation Arvind Krishna inherited from Virginia (Ginni) M. Rometty at the end of 2019.
- Krishna & Rometty 2011 through 2025 Revenue Performance
- IBM Revenue is down $39.4 billion since the end of 2011. This is a 37% decline in revenue.
- Krishna, Rometty, Palmisano & Gerstner 1999 through 2025 Revenue
- IBM Revenue is down $20 billion since the end of 1999. After achieving a history-setting, revenue high of $107 billion in 2011--IBM's Centennial--revenue's decline has only been interrupted in the last four years by an apparent string of revenue increases. But as the chart reflects below, inflation became a serious performance consideration over this timeframe as revenue increases failed to keep up with inflation.
Arvind Krishna: IBM's 2020 through 2025 Net Income (Profit) Numbers
- Arvind Krishna 2020 through 2025 Profit Performance
- Over the last six years IBM's yearly profit: fell $3.8 billion in 2020, increased $.15 billion in 2021, increased $.38 billion in 2022, increased $1.4 billion in 2023, fell $1.5 billion in 2024 and, finally, increased by $4.4 billion in 2025. Initially this was a string of positive profit news that some analysts suggested might have indicated an improvement in the corporation's earnings prospects—the battleship was turning. But as the chart reflects, inflation was a serious performance consideration over all six years. Will IBM's 2025 profit performance be maintained into 2026?
- IBM’s 2025 Yearly Profit after six years of Arvind Krishna’s leadership is up $1.2 billion. But if IBM’s net income or profits had just kept pace with inflation over this six-year period, IBM’s net income would have increased from $9.4 billion in 2019 to $11.85 billion by 2025.
- Krishna & Rometty 2011 through 2025 Profit Performance
- IBM Net Income or Profit of $15.9 billion in 2011 was still down $5.3 billion by the end of 2025, falling 36% since a achieving a two-decade-long, peak profit in 2012. Neither acquisitions or divestitures have helped stopped IBM's ever declining yearly profit numbers or even meet inflation.
- Krishna, Rometty, Palmisano & Gerstner 1999 through 2025 Profit
- IBM Net Income or Profit of $7.7 billion in 1999 was up $2.9 billion by the end of 2025. Still after reaching a two-decade high peak of 16.6 billion in 2012, profits have fallen 36.2%. The leadership of IBM achieved this profit summit in 2012 through (1) financial engineering: workforce rebalancing, and (2) aggressive bookkeeping: pension plan changes, 401(k) retirement changes, severance pay reductions, and divestitures. These non-sales oriented financial practices appeared to have reached their all-to-predictable limits in the 2012 to 2013 timeframes.
