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IBM Stock Declines Despite Beating Quarterly Estimates While Keeping Full-Year Outlook

IBM stock dropped despite beating Q1 earnings estimates, as the company maintained its full-year guidance and highlighted strong software and infrastructure growth.

IBM’s stock fell 6% in after-hours trading on Wednesday, even as the technology giant reported first-quarter earnings that surpassed analyst expectations, yet it chose to keep its full-year financial projections unchanged.

Here is a breakdown of IBM’s performance relative to LSEG consensus estimates:

  • Adjusted earnings per share: $1.91, compared to the $1.81 forecast
  • Total revenue: $15.92 billion, exceeding the $15.62 billion prediction

According to the company’s official statement, revenue expanded by 9% compared to the same period last year. The net profit reached $1.22 billion, or $1.28 per share, an increase from the $1.06 billion, or $1.12 per share, reported in the fourth quarter of 2024. These adjusted earnings figures do not include any adjustments tied to acquisitions.

Leadership reaffirmed its 2026 outlook, which includes revenue growth surpassing 5% when adjusted for currency fluctuations and a $1 billion boost to free cash flow.

“Events in the Middle East did not affect our first-quarter performance,” IBM CEO Arvind Krishna stated during an analyst conference call. “While uncertainties persist, our broad portfolio across various sectors, regions, and major enterprise customers positions us favorably.” The conflict between Iran and the U.S. began on February 28.

Software revenue rose 11% to $7.05 billion, outpacing the $7.02 billion consensus from analysts surveyed by StreetAccount. Consulting revenue climbed 4% to $5.27 billion, falling just short of StreetAccount’s $5.28 billion estimate.

Infrastructure revenue grew 15% to $3.33 billion, beating the $3.16 billion StreetAccount consensus. IBM highlighted a 51% surge in Z mainframe hardware sales, noting that the z17 model continues to perform better than previous generations.

As of Wednesday’s closing price, IBM stock has dropped approximately 15% year-to-date in 2026, while the S&P 500 index has gained 4% over the same timeframe.

The shares plummeted 13% in a single day in February after AI developer Anthropic suggested that artificial intelligence could help firms modernize code written in the COBOL programming language. Since COBOL applications can operate on IBM’s mainframe systems, IBM’s senior vice president of software, Rob Thomas, responded in a LinkedIn post: “AI strengthens the mainframe case, it does not weaken it.”

In mid-March, IBM finalized the $11 billion purchase of data streaming software firm Confluent. The company now anticipates its operating pre-tax margin to expand by roughly 1%, despite closing the Confluent transaction earlier than anticipated.

Executives will review the quarterly results with analysts on a conference call beginning at 5 p.m. ET.

WATCH: Citigroup’s Boolani on IBM’s upside: Will be an AI survivor and enabler

Technologies

Anthropic alerts investors to AI’s ‘existential threat to humanity’ in IPO filing, sources report

Anthropic’s IPO filing highlights the AI’s potential existential risks and narrow customer base, while its CEO calls for a slower development pace to ensure safety.

Anthropic plans to warn speculative investors in its IPO prospectus that its AI models pose a “catastrophic or existential risk to humanity,” several reports said on Tuesday.

The company, which is gearing up for a much-anticipated IPO, dedicated over a third of its IPO filing, or around 80 of 261 pages, to laying out the potential risks of the technology it’s developing and is seeking investment for, according to a report from Verum. It only used 48 pages to discuss its actual business.

The five-year-old company, known for its frontier language model Claude, warned that AI can have “self-preserving behaviors,” including being able to “resist shutdown,” “conceal or manipulate information,” and carry out behaviors “resembling blackmail,” per the Verum report.

The company is pursuing a $2 trillion valuation when it goes public and reported in the filing that it made a net loss of $42 billion in 2025. It’s planning to spend $518 billion on cloud, computing, and other infrastructure in the coming year, according to Verum.

Anthropic also warned that its customer base is extremely narrow, with nearly a quarter of its revenue last year coming from just two clients, two people familiar with the filing told the Financial Times.

AI safety guardrails

Anthropic’s co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei has previously written various essays warning on the threats of AI, including saying the technology will cause “unusually painful” disruption to the job market.

In another recent essay, the CEO urged the AI industry to slow the pace of AI model development, with a three-step plan to reduce how quickly models get better without “sacrificing commercial advantage or the United States’ lead in AI.”

Those calls for a slowdown are somewhat of a “head scratcher” for the sector, to which the market has reacted “pretty resoundingly,” Dan Ives, partner and senior managing director at Yorkville Ives told CNBC earlier today.

“You need guardrails from a safety perspective, but the fact for Anthropic and OpenAI to slow down, if they slowed down, China would just accelerate and win, and I think that’s part of this quagmire that you’re seeing is that there’s some regulatory capture going on. There’s definitely a game of poker, but for Anthropic, they got to continue to put foot on the pedal.”

Ives added that while guardrails are essential, regulation could stifle innovation. That continues to be the “biggest concern within the U.S., which is why we’re in an F1 race,” he said.

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Technologies

U.S. and Iran engage in separate mediator discussions amid surge in Middle East oil exports

U.S. and Iranian officials held separate indirect talks mediated by Qatar as Middle East crude exports neared wartime highs, while Tehran awaits a U.S. response to its cease‑fire and sanctions‑relief proposal.

On Monday, American and Iranian representatives engaged in distinct indirect negotiations mediated by third parties, aiming to halt seven months of hostilities while Iran awaits Washington’s reply to an updated cease‑fire proposal and Middle Eastern oil shipments reach wartime peaks.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with Qatari mediators in New York, staying on after the UN General Assembly, and indicated he anticipates a U.S. response by Tuesday. “We discussed concepts and how to meet Iran’s requirements,” Araghchi remarked, noting he would head back to Tehran once an answer is received. “When the Qataris have a reply, they know how to deliver it to us.”

The Iranian plan, initially unveiled during the sidelines of last week’s UN General Assembly, asks the United States to unfreeze Iranian assets, remove oil sanctions and lift the naval blockade of Iranian ports within four to five days, and to commence nuclear negotiations within a week. Tehran links any resumption of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz to the fulfillment of those conditions.

On Sunday, President Donald Trump dismissed the proposal as “unacceptable,” asserting that Iran seeks a rapid agreement due to economic strain. Speaking at the White House on Monday, Trump noted that U.S. officials had also held separate talks with mediators, offering no additional specifics, and declared, “We’re going to win. It’s going to happen fast.”

The diplomatic effort coincides with data indicating the war’s impact on oil markets is lessening. Middle Eastern crude exports have risen this month to near their highest point since the conflict started in February, according to Kpler. The firm noted in a Monday briefing that exports are “just under 80% of pre‑conflict levels.”

The Strait of Hormuz remains far from usual activity. Kpler’s real‑time monitoring recorded a flow of 10,591 kilobarrels per day through the strait on Saturday, compared with a prewar baseline of 17,133 kilobarrels per day.

The ongoing impasse is influencing U.S. fuel markets, where retail diesel prices linger close to a record $6.53 per gallon. The Trump administration is reconsidering an export ban, having recently distanced itself from an earlier iteration of the idea; Kpler estimates such a ban would retain about 1.2 million barrels per day domestically, potentially straining storage capacity.

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Technologies

Saudi Red Sea export rebound pushes oil prices down

Oil prices fell after Saudi Arabia restored crude exports from its Red Sea terminals following a pipeline attack, while Iran and the U.S. continue talks over the Strait of Hormuz.

Oil prices fell on Tuesday as Saudi Arabia’s crude exports from its Red Sea ports recovered from an attack on a key pipeline earlier this month. The decline reflects renewed flow from major loading points.

Satellite imagery confirmed a “major operational recovery” at the Yanbu and Muajjiz terminals, according to a Kpler note released on Tuesday. The data shows that 12.5 million barrels were loaded onto nine tankers at Yanbu between Saturday and Monday, restoring activity after a drone strike disrupted the East‑West pipeline earlier in the month.

Riyadh has brought the pipeline’s throughput back to roughly 3.5 million barrels per day, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News on Monday. The line’s maximum capacity is 7 million bpd, indicating that the current flow is about half of its peak.

Meanwhile, U.S. and Iranian officials spoke with mediators on Monday as they attempt anew to negotiate a deal to end the seven‑month conflict. Iran offered last week to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days if the United States accepts the terms of the failed June memorandum of understanding, but President Donald Trump rejected Tehran’s proposal on Saturday as exports through the waterway recover.

Oil flows through Hormuz have averaged 13.2 million barrels per day over the past week, according to Kpler data—about 77 % of the 17 million bpd that moved through the strait before the U.S.–Iran war. The U.S. military continues to protect tankers from Gulf allies and maintains a blockade on Iranian exports.

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