IBM just had the kind of day that makes investor relations teams update their LinkedIn profiles. The company’s stock cratered nearly 20% after its latest earnings report missed analyst expectations, vaporizing roughly $55 billion in market capitalization in the process.
The culprit: persistent weakness in IBM’s software and infrastructure segments, the two pillars that were supposed to be carrying the company’s growth story forward.
What went wrong at Big Blue
IBM’s software and infrastructure businesses both came in below expectations. For a company that has spent years repositioning itself around cloud computing, AI, and enterprise software, that’s not just disappointing.
To put the $55 billion market cap loss in perspective, that’s roughly the entire value of some mid-cap companies simply disappearing overnight.
