International Business Machines Corp: IBM: What do CIOs say about Mainframes?

Research evidence excerpt

International Business Machines Corp: IBM: What do CIOs say about Mainframes?

Mark C. Newman +1 212 845 7822 mark.newman@bernsteinsg.com 15 July 2026

DETAILS

Yesterday before market open IBM pre-announced its FQ2’26 revenue and EPS below guidance, consensus and our expectations.

We analyze selected results from ourrecent CIO survey published last night and what this means for IBM.

FQ2’26 preliminary revenue came in at $17.2billion, significantly below us and consensus at $17.96bn and $17.86bn

respectively. The main drivers for the miss were unexpected weakness in mainframe (infrastructure revenue down 7% YoY) and

transaction processing (dragging software growth to only +5% YoY), which are both directly related. Preliminary EPS also

came in light at $2.93 vs. us and consensus at $3.09 and $3.03 respectively.

Mainframes and the associated software stack including Transaction Processing were the drivers of the miss. In

the letter to investors, IBM blamed changing buying patterns from clients toward servers, storage, and memory to secure

supply-constrained infrastructure ahead of expected price increases. Our recent CIO survey shows 33% of CIOs planning to

decrease MIPS capacity over the next five years, a significant increase from 23% in Nov 25.

For consulting, the preliminary revenue came in at roughly $5.3bn, flat YoY. Based on the May 26 CIO survey, there

could be further headwinds in consulting, since a net -15% of CIOs expect the use of third party IT consultants to increase in

the remainder of the year, so it appears that CIOs are pivoting away from consultants.

While IBM’s preliminary software growth of ~5% appears disappointing versus expectations, management made it clear that the