2. International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM)
Dividend Yield as of January 20: 5.01%
Number of Years of Dividend Increases: 26
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 41
International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) provides integrated technology solutions worldwide, including cloud services, software for vertical and domain-specific solutions, customer information control systems, analytics, and integration software solutions, among other related products and services.
On October 26, International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) declared a $1.64 per share quarterly dividend, in line with previous. This dividend was paid on December 10, to shareholders of record on November 10.
International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) announced on January 21 that it has signed a definitive agreement under which Francisco Partners will acquire healthcare data and analytics assets from International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) that are currently part of the Watson Health business.
Goldman Sachs analyst Brian Essex on January 9 initiated coverage of International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) with a Neutral rating and a $140 price target. The analyst believes that International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) is well positioned for better growth, profitability, and sustainable shareholder return with elevated enterprise transformation demand anticipated ahead. However, it could take the company some time to drive better shareholder value.
In the third quarter of 2021, 41 hedge funds were long International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM), with stakes equaling $1.40 billion. Arrowstreet Capital is one of the leading stakeholders of the company, holding 2.86 million shares worth $398.1 million.
Here is what St. James Investment Company has to say about International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) in its Q4 2021 investor letter:
“IBM was not the first company to build computers. The distinction belongs to Sperry-Rand’s subsidiary UNIVAC, which introduced the first commercially successful computers in the early 1950s. In this era, IBM did possess the largest research and development department of the business machines industry and quickly caught up, introducing cost-competitive computers a few years after UNIVAC. By the late 1950s, IBM held the dominant market share in computers. IBM also touted a vastly superior sales organization, which used a sales tactic called “paper machines” (the equivalent of today’s “vaporware”). If a competitor’s product was selling well in a market segment that IBM had yet to penetrate, the company would announce a competing product and start taking orders for the “paper machine” long before it was available.
One cannot overstate how powerful IBM was in the computer industry in the 1950s and 1960s. Every competitor rightly worried that if their product worked too well for too long, it was only a matter of
time before an army of IBM salesforce representatives mobilized. In their easily recognizable uniforms of starched white shirts, red ties and blue suits, IBM marketers marched on their customers and offered a more expensive, but much more defensible, choice. “Nobody gets fired for buying IBM” was a common phrase. Even competitors acknowledged that the company excelled at sales. As a UNIVAC executive once complained, ‘It doesn’t do much good to build a better mousetrap if the other guy selling mousetraps has five times as many salesmen.’” (Click here to see the full text)
