Lou Gerstner wrote, "People truly do what you inspect, not what you expect." … Lest we forget, these "inspection pages" exist because chief executives are "people" too.
Arvind Krishna's 2020-21 Revenue and Profit Performance: 2020-21
- The Importance of Revenue and Profit
- Arvind Krishna's 2020-21 Revenue by the Numbers
- Arvind Krishna's 2020-21 Net Income by the Numbers
Evaluating Arvind Krishna's 2020-21 Revenue and Net Income (Profit)
What were Arvind Krishna's second-year 2020-21 revenue and profit performance numbers?
For the full year of 2020, revenues were down 4.6% and profit was down 41%.
For the full year of 2020, revenues were down 4.6% and profit was down 41%.
A worthless car is one that can’t move passengers or cargo between points "A" and "B" safely and reliably. 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 IBM has been failing to deliver products of higher value to its customers. Selling products at a profit is, ultimately, the responsibility of the corner office. These charts reflect what should be the two top priorities of the corner office, not earnings per share.
Long-term, sustainable revenue and profitability should be the chief executive’s two top performance metrics.
Long-term, sustainable revenue and profitability should be the chief executive’s two top performance metrics.
Arvind Krishna's 2020-21 Revenue by the Numbers
- Arvind Krishna 2020–21 Revenue Performance
- IBM Revenue was down $20 billion since the end of 2019, falling $3.5 billion in 2020 and falling $16.3 billion in 2021 to $57 billion—a 26% decline in revenue from the $77-billion corporation Arvind Krishna inherited from Virginia (Ginni) M. Rometty.
- Krishna & Rometty 2011–21 Revenue Performance
- IBM Revenue was down $49.6 billion since the end of 2011—a consistent, methodical, decade-long, decline of 46.4% from the $107-billion corporation Virginia (Ginni) M. Rometty inherited from Samuel J. Palmisano.
- Krishna, Rometty, Palmisano & Gerstner 1999–2021 Revenue
- IBM Revenue was down $30.2 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 been interrupted only once in a decade-long, interminable slide.
Arvind Krishna's 2020-21 Net Income (Profit) by the Numbers
- Arvind Krishna 2020–21 Profit Performance
- IBM Net Income or Profit of $9.4 billion in 2019 was down $3.7 billion by the end of 2021, falling $3.8 billion in 2020 but increasing by a comparatively insignificant $.15 billion in 2021.
- Krishna & Rometty 2011–21 Profit Performance
- IBM Net Income or Profit of $15.9 billion in 2011 was down $8.3 billion by the end of 2021, falling 64% since a achieving a two-decade-long peak in 2012.
- Krishna, Rometty, Palmisano & Gerstner 1999–2021 Profit
- IBM Net Income or Profit of $7.7 billion in 1999 was down $2 billion by the end of 2021, falling 25.5% after reaching a two-decade-high peak in 2012. This 21st Century summit was achieved through (1) financial engineering: workforce rebalancing, and (2) aggressive bookkeeping: pension plan changes, 401(k) retirement changes, severance pay reductions, and divestitures. In 2011-13 these non-sales oriented financial practices appeared to have reached their all-to-predictable limits.