Stock Update: International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) – Deal Brings IBM and Salesforce.com Closer Together

[at Investopedia] – IBM (NYSE: IBM) has a deal to acquire Bluewolf Group LLC, one of Salesforce.com’s (NYSE: CRM) top partners and a global player in cloud consulting and implementation services. The acquisition deepens IBM’s … Read more on this. International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) , valued at $143.41B, started trading this morning at $150.26. Looking at the equity, the company’s one day range is $149.22 to $151.95 and has traded between $116.90 and $176.30 over the past year. IBM (IBM) shares are currently priced at 11.07x this year’s forecasted earnings, which makes them relatively expensive compared to the industry’s 9.37x earnings multiple for the same period. The company pays shareholders $5.20 per share annually in dividends, yielding 3.48%. In a review of the consensus earnings estimate this quarter, 20 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. The full-year EPS estimate is $13.49, which would be a $1.43 better than last year. The quarterly earnings estimate is predicated on a consensus revenue forecast of $18.25 Billion. If reported, that would be a 6.84% decrease over the year-ago quarter. In terms of ratings, Morgan Stanley upgraded IBM from Equal-Weight to Overweight (Feb 18, 2016). Previously, JMP Securities Initiated IBM at to Mkt Outperform. The average price target for IBM shares by the analysts covering the stock is $136.18, which is 9.37% below where the stock opened this morning. See more in (NYSE:IBM) Similar Articles: Company Update: International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) – IBM to snap up Salesforce partner for $200 million Market Update: International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) – Datawatch Brings Powerful Self-Service Data Preparation Capabilities to IBM Watson Analytics and IBM Cognos Analytics Users Company Update: International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) – IBM Brings Object-Based Storage Services to the Cloud