7 ms·
Exactly. It's like when people says apple/google/ms is in trouble. But even if they suddenly made no profit for the new 50 years, they would survive with the m
by sametmax 8y ago
Exactly. It's like when people says apple/google/ms is in trouble.
But even if they suddenly made no profit for the new 50 years, they would survive with the money they already have in bank anyway.
- cm2187 8y agoIt’s like saying IBM is in trouble in 1980. Of course it’s not, it’s a very strong company. But...
- sametmax 8y agoIBM is a perfect example. The trouble was really not trouble at all. They felt the tremor, but that's it.
- monocasa 8y agoIBM is a withered husk of it's former self.
- Retric 8y agoAdjusting for inflation IBM is worth more now than it was in 1980 and it's been kicking off a lot of dividends. Calling it a husk is misleading. Sure it failed to keep up with the growing size of the PC market, but that's a long way from failure.
- cm2187 8y agoThe pie has become gigantic but their share of the pie has reduced to pretty much zero% from close to 100%.
- Retric 8y agoThey never got close to 100% and they still make ~1/4 what google does so that's far from nothing.
- monocasa 8y agoI've heard on the grapevine that they've been selling off real estate and other capital to stay in the black.
- Retric 8y agoI don't see how that's generating 10+ billion per year in profits. Their P/E is 12 and they are worth ~130 billion. It would be one thing if they where nominally profitable, but that's a lot of money.
- melling 8y agoIBM is not the same company it was in the 1980’s. Lou Gerstner laid off 100,000 people in the early 1990’s. Now most of its employees are non-US based: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/28/technology/ibm-india.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/28/technology/ibm-india.html
- izacus 8y agoI think that was exactly the point :)
- latch 8y agoI agree some people seem to say these things with an unrealistically short timeframe in mind. But I think when most people say a very large company is in trouble, they're talking much more meta, because they understand that 50+ billion dollars takes decades to burn through. Alan Mulally, arguably one of the most effective modern day leaders, has a great quote about his [former] company: "We have been going out of business for 40 years." This is what most people are talking about.