I think you buy IBM and hold it for a decade
Updated
IBM dipped after its earnings report Friday and now sits at an important support level. While I'd love for it to dip to $110 or even $100 so I could place a larger buy order there, I have my doubts that it will dip that far. Dips have been hard to come by in this bull market. And while IBM had a disappointing quarter, executives forecasted that it will be back on track to sustainable revenue growth by the end of the year.
For a technology stock, IBM is surprisingly inexpensive. I've currently got the stock's forward P/E at about 10.5, and forward P/S at about 1.4. Compare that to, say, Microsoft with a forward P/E over 30 and a forward P/S over 10. In addition to providing a good earnings yield, I forecast that IBM will yield 5.8% in dividends over the next year. Overall, I estimate that IBM has over 17% upside to its median price-to-value ratio of the last four years.
The reason IBM is so cheap is that its EBITDA per share has been in a long, slow slide for the last ten years. For the last four years, EBITDA has shrunk over 1% per year. Sales growth over the last four years was barely positive, with a growth rate of 0.01%. However, I'm not convinced that these are the most relevant numbers. EBITDA is not a very good measure of profitability, and in fact its current popularity in the investment world is a bit worrisome. A better metric is IBM's free cash flow, which has grown about 0.5% per year over the last four years. And its dividend has grown about 1% per year. So personally I think the company has already turned a corner to the upside in terms of profitability. Plus, IBM has unusually good ESG ratings and generally positive market sentiment, with put/call ratios looking quite bullish and average analyst price target 15% above the current price.
Most importantly, I think IBM has incredible potential as a technology leader. They've had more patents than any other company, by a wide margin, for 27 years running. They're averaging 82 patents per year per billion dollars of market cap, which means you're buying an incredible amount of cutting-edge technology for the price you pay. Of the companies I follow, the next best value in terms of patents-to-market-cap is HPE, with just 26 patents-per-year-per-billion. And IBM's patents are in potentially world-changing fields, like AI and quantum computing. This is by far the best value in the market for a Singularity technology play. And that, more than anything else, is why I think you buy IBM here and hold it for a decade.
IBM has crossed into the lower half of its ten-year triangle and has fairly good risk-reward within the triangle from here. Assuming it eventually breaks out of the triangle to the upside, I'd expect it to eventually recapture its 2012 highs over $200 per share.
For a technology stock, IBM is surprisingly inexpensive. I've currently got the stock's forward P/E at about 10.5, and forward P/S at about 1.4. Compare that to, say, Microsoft with a forward P/E over 30 and a forward P/S over 10. In addition to providing a good earnings yield, I forecast that IBM will yield 5.8% in dividends over the next year. Overall, I estimate that IBM has over 17% upside to its median price-to-value ratio of the last four years.
The reason IBM is so cheap is that its EBITDA per share has been in a long, slow slide for the last ten years. For the last four years, EBITDA has shrunk over 1% per year. Sales growth over the last four years was barely positive, with a growth rate of 0.01%. However, I'm not convinced that these are the most relevant numbers. EBITDA is not a very good measure of profitability, and in fact its current popularity in the investment world is a bit worrisome. A better metric is IBM's free cash flow, which has grown about 0.5% per year over the last four years. And its dividend has grown about 1% per year. So personally I think the company has already turned a corner to the upside in terms of profitability. Plus, IBM has unusually good ESG ratings and generally positive market sentiment, with put/call ratios looking quite bullish and average analyst price target 15% above the current price.
Most importantly, I think IBM has incredible potential as a technology leader. They've had more patents than any other company, by a wide margin, for 27 years running. They're averaging 82 patents per year per billion dollars of market cap, which means you're buying an incredible amount of cutting-edge technology for the price you pay. Of the companies I follow, the next best value in terms of patents-to-market-cap is HPE, with just 26 patents-per-year-per-billion. And IBM's patents are in potentially world-changing fields, like AI and quantum computing. This is by far the best value in the market for a Singularity technology play. And that, more than anything else, is why I think you buy IBM here and hold it for a decade.
IBM has crossed into the lower half of its ten-year triangle and has fairly good risk-reward within the triangle from here. Assuming it eventually breaks out of the triangle to the upside, I'd expect it to eventually recapture its 2012 highs over $200 per share.
Note
IBM is testing its 10-year trend line after announcing it has developed a new, lower-power 2 nm chip.
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