International Business Machines Corporation IBM is scheduled to report first-quarter 2026 earnings on April 22. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for sales and earnings is pegged at $15.56 billion and $1.82 per share, respectively. Earnings estimates for IBM for 2026 and 2027 have declined 0.3% each to $12.38 and $13.32, respectively, over the past 60 days.
IBM Estimate Trend
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Earnings Surprise History
The cloud and data platform provider delivered a four-quarter earnings surprise of 7.9%, on average, beating estimates on each occasion. In the last reported quarter, the company pulled off an earnings surprise of 4.4%.
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Earnings Whispers
Our proven model predicts an earnings beat for IBM for the first quarter. The combination of a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) increases the chances of an earnings beat. This is perfectly the case here. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they’re reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.
IBM currently has an ESP of +0.37% with a Zacks Rank #3. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
Factors Shaping Upcoming Results
During the first quarter, IBM inked a partnership with ElevenLabs, an AI research and product company, to integrate advanced voice AI (speech-to-text and text-to-speech) into IBM watsonx Orchestrate. The collaboration is expected to boost IBM’s commercial prospects in several industries such as banks, insurance companies, healthcare providers and utilities. The company partnered with global technology group e& to build an enterprise-grade agentic AI foundation, starting with policy, risk and compliance. The collaboration expanded IBM’s enterprise-grade agentic AI solutions while strengthening its role as a trusted AI partner for businesses worldwide. These are likely to have generated incremental revenues for the Software segment.
During the to-be-reported quarter, IBM collaborated with SEI Investments Company SEIC to speed up enterprise transformation using agentic AI, automation and modern technologies. Per the deal, IBM Consulting will work with SEI to review its systems and workflows using data-driven insights. The focus will be on advancing automation, process redesign and enterprise-wide modernization. IBM also partnered with E.SUN Bank to create Taiwan’s first enterprise-level AI governance framework for the banking sector. IBM Consulting and E.SUN Bank developed an AI governance system that reviews a bank’s current AI capabilities and manages the full AI lifecycle, starting from development and training to deployment and monitoring, ensuring AI systems remain transparent, reliable and accountable. These are likely to have generated additional revenues for the Consulting segment.
In the first quarter, the company completed the acquisition of Confluent, a leading data streaming platform, for $31 per share in cash, representing an enterprise value of approximately $11 billion. The deal has brought real-time data across IBM’s platforms, creating a unified data foundation that allows AI models, agents and automated workflows to operate with up-to-date context across on-premises, cloud and hybrid environments. The buyout has enabled IBM to build a scalable ecosystem to support next-generation digital operations. It also positions IBM to lead AI-driven enterprises by enabling smarter, faster and more robust business processes with real-time data.
However, despite solid hybrid cloud, quantum technology and AI traction, IBM faces stiff competition from Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Azure. The company is also facing challenges from AI firm Anthropic as the latter’s Claude Code tool can modernize legacy COBOL systems — a foundational programming language deeply embedded in IBM’s mainframe ecosystem. With Claude Code proposing to substantially automate code exploration, documentation, refactoring and security analysis, it threatened to reduce enterprises’ reliance on specialized legacy service providers like IBM, bringing its sustenance at stake. This is likely to redefine the competitive landscape, leading to a broad-based downslide across the sector. Increasing pricing pressure is eroding margins, and profitability has trended down over the years, barring occasional spikes.
Price Performance
Over the past year, IBM has gained 2.5%, lagging the industry’s rise of 145.4% and its peers like Microsoft Corporation MSFT and Oracle Corporation ORCL. While Microsoft has gained 11.8%, Oracle surged 32% over this period.
One-Year IBM Stock Price Performance
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Key Valuation Metric
From a valuation standpoint, IBM appears to be trading at a premium relative to the industry and is trading well above its mean. Going by the price/earnings ratio, the company shares currently trade at 19.3 forward earnings, higher than 10.42 for the industry and the stock’s mean of 15.31.
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Investment Considerations
IBM aims to benefit from the increasing propensity of business enterprises to undertake a cloud-agnostic and interoperable approach to secure multi-cloud management with a diligent focus on hybrid cloud and generative AI solutions. With a surge in traditional cloud-native workloads and associated applications, along with a rise in generative AI deployment and quantum computing, there is a radical expansion in the number of cloud workloads that enterprises are currently managing. This has resulted in heterogeneous, dynamic and complex infrastructure strategies, which have led to a healthy demand trend.
However, IBM’s frequent acquisitions have escalated integration risks. Buyouts have negatively impacted the company’s balance sheet in the form of high levels of goodwill and net intangible assets. IBM’s margins might have been strained by limited cost-cutting opportunities and stiff competitive pressures, likely delaying key product launches. Stiff competition from established players and new challengers has dented its growth prospects.
End Note
IBM is trading at a premium valuation, and investors could wait for a better entry point to cash in on its long-term fundamentals. With declining earnings estimates, the stock is witnessing a negative investor perception. Consequently, it might be prudent to trade with caution at the moment.
IBM expects its growth to be driven primarily by analytics, cloud computing and security services. A better business mix, improving operating leverage through productivity gains and increased investments in growth opportunities, will likely be conducive to long-term growth. IBM is poised to benefit from strong demand for hybrid cloud and AI, which will drive growth in the Software and Consulting segments in the long run.
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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).