Transcript
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This is Scott Becker with the Becker Business Podcast. Today's discussion and we try each day to bring you a business or market insights episode plus an interview from a leading business person. Today's discussion is IBM tries to become a player again. So, so here's the issue. IBM, if you went back 20, 30 years ago, was the biggest player in technology. It was really number one. You fast forward 20, 30 years. There's the magnificent seven, there's the five biggest market cap companies and ultimately at the end of the day, IBM has sustained itself but never rose to again be one of the leaders in the business. So its market cap is about $290 billion. If I look in contrast, you've got Apple's at 4.1 trillion or so, Nvidian's 4.4 trillion or so, Google's right about 4 trillion, Microsoft's in the 3.5, 3.6 trillion or so. And IBM is not even a tenth of the market cap of those. But it has made itself relevant again. You know, historically IBM way back in the day was a hardware company, PCs and all kinds of other laptops and so forth. And they sort of got out of that business, doubled down on consulting, rebuilt the company as a consulting firm. But again, it's never had the relevance that some of These other Magnificent Five companies have had at least over the last 10, 20 years. Now it's back at it. It's up 150%. It's stock for us for the last five years. It's up 41% this year and it just announced its largest deal in years is it agreed to buy confluent in an $11 billion deal. The concept of buying confluent is to add stronger and stronger data and automated mission qualities and technologies to IBM and trying to make them again, making a much bigger push into AI and cloud. So here's the deal with IBM. Love them or hate them, what was once known as Big Blue, they had the famous turnaround a long time ago under Lou Gerstner. People of my generation will remember that. But we give them great credit for taking a swing at the plate and trying to get again to be a player again. It is what it is. God bless IBM. Thank you for listening to the Becker Business Podcast. You know, please feel free at any time to text Scott Becker, 773-766-5322. In fact, if you're the first person to text me that you've listened to this PODC the way through, we will send you a $50Amazon gift certificate. You've got a text 773-766-5322. Thank you for listening to the Becker Business Podcast. Thank you very, very much.