Louis Gerstner Three Quotations

Our second-quarter results are right in line with our expectations and with the view we've been expressing since last October, ... Essentially, we've had three quarters of slow revenue growth, driven by a combination of the Y2K slowdown and a series of actions we've taken to improve our business portfolio. During that time, however, we have been able to produce satisfactory earnings growth.

We would like to have seen more revenue in the quarter, but we were held back by three items, ... First, demand for our microelectronics products -- from both outside customers and internal IBM customers -- far outstripped our ability to supply components. Second, the upcoming release of our new high-end server slowed demand for the System/390 family of servers. Finally, parts of our software business slowed unexpectedly in September.