Is IBM Stock A Real Bargain?
International Business Machines (IBM) stock trades at 19.9 times the past year’s earnings. The median S&P 500 company trades at 22.1 times. The shares lost 14.4% over the last twelve months, while the S&P 500 returned 17.1%. Is IBM a good business on sale, or a fair price for one whose growth has stalled? The answer starts with what the price buys you today.
How Big A Bargain Is IBM Stock?
IBM stock is about 10% cheaper than the median S&P 500 company on the price-to-earnings ratio, or P/E. The P/E tells you how many dollars you pay for each $1 of a year’s profit. So IBM is cheaper, but not by much.
You get a solid business for that price. IBM sells software, consulting and infrastructure such as mainframe computers, with what management calls a strong presence among the Fortune 1000. Software is the largest piece, with revenue up 10.6% in fiscal 2025. Total revenue over the past twelve months grew 7.9% from a year earlier.
Profits have grown faster than sales. Operating margin is the share of sales left after running costs. IBM’s rose to 18.4% over the past twelve months, from 14.4% three years earlier. Free cash flow, the cash left after running and investing in the business, equals 6.2% of IBM’s market value. So the low price looks more like doubt about IBM than decay inside it. The past year’s sales growth is one strong year, though, and IBM’s three-year record is slower.
IBM’s Sales Grew Slower Over Three Years
IBM’s revenue grew an average of 4.5% a year over three years, against 5.8% for the S&P 500. So the past year ran well ahead of IBM’s three-year pace. The latest quarter already shows the faster pace fading. In fiscal Q2 2026, revenue grew just 1%, down from 9.5% the quarter before.
Management said the quarter fell short of expectations, and gave a reason. In the final weeks of June, many clients moved spending to servers, storage and memory, which were in short supply. As a result, tens of large IBM deals failed to close on time. Transaction processing software made up most of those deals, management said. Its revenue fell 9% in the quarter.
That slowdown is the main business risk for anyone buying the stock now. A key factor for IBM’s near-term valuation is whether these delayed transactions convert to revenue in the second half or face continued postponement.
Will IBM’s Slipped Deals Come Back?
Some already have. About a third of the slipped deals closed in the first three weeks after the quarter ended. Management gave that update on the fiscal Q2 2026 call, and called the slip a delay, not lost demand.
Management now expects full-year 2026 revenue growth of 4% to 5%. For software, it expects growth of 6% to 8% in 2026. The low end of that range assumes the recent spending shift lasts through the second half. Management also expects free cash flow to grow by about $1 billion in 2026. With the stock trading at only a modest discount to the broader market, investors appear skeptical that growth will rebound as quickly as management forecasts.
A buyer at today’s price is not betting on a rescue. Operating margin and cash have held up, so the bet is that one weak quarter was a delay. The fiscal Q3 2026 report will show whether that bet was right. Management expects that quarter’s revenue growth at constant currency to match the full-year range of 4% to 5%. Constant currency leaves out exchange-rate swings. A result below that range could indicate that some deferred customer demand has become harder to recover.
How To Act On IBM?
