Boston, MA 04/15/2014 (wallstreetpr) – International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM), a giant tech company worth $206 billion, reports its fiscal 2014 first quarter results Wednesday. In the recent past quarters, the company’s reporting has been characterized with sluggish growth in sales. Therefore, as the company reports, investors should keep a close eye on what the company stated about its sales.
However, analysts have already modeled what they believe the company is likely to achieve in the looming financial reporting. Wall Street expects to see the company reports earnings per share of $2.54, indicating a positive change of 16 percent from the same quarter a year ago. The revenue is estimated to come in at $22.93 billion, suggesting positive change of 2.1 percent from a year ago.
The company has surpassed earnings expectations in the past four quarters.
Downward earnings adjustment
Analysts have seemingly grown bearish on IBM in recent months. The company had its first quarter earnings estimates revised downward by 20 percent.
Revenue issue
International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) suffers sluggish sales due to its troubled hardware business. However, the company has huge potential in the data analytics and cloud computing businesses. With the hardware business sales being on the downturn, analysts expect the company to focus more on high-growth areas in order to keep revenue increasing. On that note, the company has cloud computing and data analytics operations to turn to in a more aggressive way. In so doing, the company should seek to stay ahead of the curve, which means staying ahead of Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) and Cisco Systems Inc (NASDAQ:CSCO).
To wrap up in IBM
International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) may be facing sluggish sales, but it has many growth potential if greater focus can be turned to the high-growth cloud computing and data analytics business. Moreover, it is worth acknowledging that the company’s management is doing well in that earnings have consistently improved in the recent quarters amid sluggish sales.
