Jim Cramer Reacts to IBM Earnings

IBM is Real Money's stock of the day. IBM said adjusted earnings for the three months ending in December came in at $4.87 per share, down 5% from the same period last year but ahead of the Street consensus of $4.82 per share. Group sales were also softer than the prior period, falling 1% to $21.76 billion, but the figure topped estimates and IBM said it sees free cash flow for 2019 of around $12 billion, largely in-line with its tally over the past year, reported TheStreet's Martin Baccardax. "We see the strong bookings Red Hat recently reported as further evidence of clients' confidence in the value," IBM CFO Jim Kavanaugh told investors on a conference call late Tuesday. "Remember, the quarter ended a month after the transaction was announced. From a value perspective, in addition to the growing Red Hat business itself, we see an opportunity to lift all of IBM by selling more of our own IBM Cloud and by selling more of our analytics and AI capabilities on OpenShift across multiple platforms."