If my foresight were as clear as my hindsight, I should be better off by a damned sight.

J. L. Mott, President of the Iron and Steel Association, 1873

IBM's Twenty-First Century Corporate Performance

Published July 19, 2021
Updated April 2, 2022

IBM's 21st Century Corporate Performance

Comparing Business Results of Two Sixteen-Year, Transitionary Periods

Not one of IBM’s stakeholders has profited from IBM’s twenty-first-century management of the corporation’s stock price. IBM's shareholder-first and ‑foremost strategy is a dismal failure and the direction must change.

A chart that compares two, sixteen-year periods of transition at IBM: 1960 to 1976, 2005 to 2021. The chart includes these IBM KPIs: Net Income (profit), Tangible Assets, Revenue, Net Income Productivity, Market Value, Stock Price Appreciation, Sales Productivity, Employment, and Goodwill.

IBM’s Board of Directors must act to avoid the looming failure of an iconic company that, at one time, represented all that was great about the American form of capitalism

Business Results in Some Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Brand performance

What is happening at IBM is a deterioration of its overall brand.

This is happening at the macro-level, which is to say it is a problem caused over the last two decades by the corner office, their direct reports, and their financial policies.

The result has been a two-decade long drop in sales productivity.

Patent Performance

In 2018, a new measurement took front and center: IFI Claims Patent Services “Ultimate Owner Ranking.” Although this is still not a perfect measurement for patents, it is more effective in measuring a corporation's patent ownership, efficiency, and effectiveness.

Bar graph showing the Worldwide Patent Leaders in 2020: IBM, Samsung and Canon.

By this new measurement, IBM is a very, very distant second place to Samsung.

Revenue Performance

For first-quarter of 2021, IBM announced, "Revenue of $17.7 billion, up 1 percent (down 2 percent adjusting for currency). For the second quarter of 2021, IBM announced, "Revenue of $18.7 billion, up 3 percent (flat adjusting for divested businesses and currency).

Image a IBM Squirrel eating a nut with the tagline:

Heck, even a blind squirrel finds the occasional nut!

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