UPDATED 08:46 EDT / JULY 18 2011

IBM Shows Gains Ahead of Q2 Earnings Call Today

IBM will be announcing their second quarter fiscal report after the stock market closes later today.  With the company’s recent expansion of the cloud in Japan and their partnership with Coriell Institute for medical research, investors are still supportive, with assumptions that IBM’s Q2 announcements will go quite well.

Here’s what to expect:

Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expect IBM to report sales of $25.35 billion and a per-share profit of $3.03.  Analyst Chris Whitmore of Deutsche Bank Securities says in a note to clients that he expects sales that are slightly above the consensus at $25.9 billion, which would amount to growth of more than 9 percent over Q2 of last year, and earnings of $3.01 or slightly below.

Last quarter, IBM raised its 2011 operating profit guidance to at least $13.15 per share, excluding items, up from the previous estimate of at least $13 per share. IBM is so confident in its prospects that it has set a goal of $20 per share in operating earnings by 2015 — a rare, long-term profit prediction. Some analysts have questioned whether IBM is running out of ways to squeeze profit out its business, but investors appear to think the company has plenty of juice left. The stock is up more than 40 percent since September, according to an MSNBC report.

Though IBM has hit a few bumps in the road, the demand for their product and services are still high, since the company have been around for quite some time – they just celebrated their centennial, as a matter of fact.  And as mentioned above, companies are still putting their faith on Big Blue’s capabilities to generate more money in the next 100 years.

Aside from IBM’s fiscal report, everyone is awaiting their announcement of their XIV Storage System, which will again increase their edge in the cloud arena.  And also, they are donating their open source code, Symphony, to the Apache Software Foundation in order to make it commercially available to the public, with its main goal to end Microsoft Office’s dominance.

Though people may be questioning Big Blue’s feats, others are thinking that this giant will be able to survive another hundred years or more, as other corporations are still entrusting their fates to IBM’s products and services.

 


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