Stock Update (NYSE:IBM): IBM and VMware Announce Strategic Partnership to Accelerate Enterprise Hybrid Cloud Adoption

[PR Newswire] – LAS VEGAS and PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — IBM InterConnect — IBM (NYSE: IBM) and VMware, Inc. (VMW) today announced a strategic partnership designed to help enterprises take better advantage of the cloud’s speed and economics. The new agreement will enable enterprise customers to easily extend their existing workloads, as they are, from their on-premises software-defined data center to the cloud. With nearly 100 percent of Fortune 100 customers utilizing VMware technologies, this partnership will help preserve and extend customer investments across thousands of data centers. Customers will be able to leverage VMware’s proven technologies with IBM’s growing footprint of 45 Cloud Data Centers worldwide, helping companies scale globally while avoiding retooling expenses, development risks and reducing security concerns. Read more on this. International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) , valued at $128.83B, began trading this morning at $133.84. Looking at today’s market, IBM one day range is $132.41 to $134.31 with the price of the stock fluctuating between $116.90 to $176.30 over the last 52 weeks. IBM shares are currently priced at 9.86x this year’s forecasted earnings, which makes them relatively expensive compared to the industry’s 5.51x forward p/e ratio. And for passive income investors, the company pays shareholders $5.20 per share annually in dividends, yielding 3.91%. In a review of the consensus earnings estimate this quarter, 19 sell-side analysts are looking at $2.08 per share, which would be $0.83 worse than the year-ago quarter and a $0.87 sequential decrease. In looking at the bigger picture, the full-year EPS estimate of $13.50 would be a $1.42 setback when compared to the previous year’s annual results. The quarterly earnings estimate is predicated on a consensus revenue forecast of $18.24 Billion. If reported, that would be a 6.89% decrease over the year-ago quarter. Recently, Morgan Stanley upgraded IBM from Equal-Weight to Overweight (Feb 18, 2016). Previously, JMP Securities Initiated IBM at to Mkt Outperform. When considering if perhaps the stock is under or overvalued, the average price target is $132.40, which is 1.08% below where the stock opened this morning. See more in (NYSE:IBM) Similar Articles: Stock Update: International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) – IBM Announced New Cloud Unit for Its Recent Cloud Acquisitions Company Update: International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) – Chumbak Selects IBM Cloud to Accelerate Business Growth Market Update: International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) – CSC Embraces IBM Cloud to Accelerate Hybrid Cloud Adoption