We don?t see this quarter as being a major catalyst, in either direction, but we believe the trends will improve for IBM during 2006.
We like restructuring stories, and look for a better entry point to potentially get more constructive.
While the quarter may provide a glimpse of the current state of the business, we believe that investors are far more interested in the potential impact of potential pending cost cuts on the company?s profit and loss.
We still like the HP story and think the stock has room for additional upside potential.
Given sentiment, we expect some near-term upside in the stock capped by revenue growth issues.
At this point, we are not clear if the heavy ship out of the last week of December or weaker-than-expected demand are the reasons.
We believe that the stock will trade well into product announcements next week, which we believe will include low-end notebook.
