1. International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM)
Dividend Yield as of July 19: 4.78%
An American multinational tech company, International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) generated $1.3 billion in net cash from operating activities and $2.1 billion in free cash flow. The company returned $1.5 billion to shareholders through dividends in Q2. International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) has been making consistent dividend payments since 1916 while maintaining a 27-year track record of dividend growth. As of July 19, the stock’s dividend yield came in at 4.78%.
In July, Morgan Stanley lifted its price target on International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) to $157, with an Overweight rating on the shares. The firm mentioned IBM as one of the best-performing stocks in its coverage in 2022 so far and expects the company’s outperformance in the second half of the year.
According to Insider Monkey’s database for Q1, 43 hedge funds owned stakes in International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM), down slightly from 44 in the previous quarter. These stakes are collectively valued at nearly $1.2 billion. Arrowstreet Capital was the company’s leading shareholder in Q1.
St. James Investment Company mentioned International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) in its Q4 2021 investor letter. Here is what the firm had to say:
“IBM was not the first company to build computers. The distinction belongs to Sperry-Rand’s subsidiary UNIVAC, which introduced the first commercially successful computers in the early 1950s. In this era, IBM did possess the largest research and development department of the business machines industry and quickly caught up, introducing cost-competitive computers a few years after UNIVAC. By the late 1950s, IBM held the dominant market share in computers. IBM also touted a vastly superior sales organization, which used a sales tactic called “paper machines” (the equivalent of today’s “vaporware”). If a competitor’s product was selling well in a market segment that IBM had yet to penetrate, the company would announce a competing product and start taking orders for the “paper machine” long before it was available.
One cannot overstate how powerful IBM was in the computer industry in the 1950s and 1960s. Every competitor rightly worried that if their product worked too well for too long, it was only a matter of time before an army of IBM salesforce representatives mobilized. In their easily recognizable uniforms of starched white shirts, red ties and blue suits, IBM marketers marched on their customers and offered a more expensive, but much more defensible, choice. “Nobody gets fired for buying IBM” was a common phrase. Even competitors acknowledged that the company excelled at sales. As a UNIVAC executive once complained, ‘It doesn’t do much good to build a better mousetrap if the other guy selling mousetraps has five times as many salesmen.’” (Click here to see the full text)
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