Adobe Systems Incorporated (ADBE), Oracle Corporation (ORCL), International Business Machines Corp. (IBM): There’s Always Potential in the Software Industry

To stay ahead of its competitors, International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) has also recently launched its Big Data Technology for radically faster data analysis and decision making. It is expected to offer industry leading performance, scale, and reliability on the user’s choice of platform from Linux, UNIX and Windows to z/OS.

Conclusion

With Adobe Systems Incorporated (NASDAQ:ADBE)’s stock trading at approximately 32 times its earnings and a 17% discount to the industry average, it is offering promising growth prospects. I would advise buying stock in Adobe for investors who can lock their investment for a few years as the company does not provide regular income. Since 2006, Adobe has not paid any dividends.

salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) is also a non-dividend paying company and should be sold as it is declaring negative net income from the past 2 years.

For an investor looking for a regular income stream, International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) is the stock to buy as the company has been increasing dividends per share since 2003. With its recent launch of DB2 technology, the company looks forward to increasing its annual dividends by 47%, as displayed by its dividend history. Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ:ORCL) also pays a dividend since 2009, and is expected to increase its annual dividend by 14% in 2013. Overall, IBM should be bought and preferred over Oracle, as IBM is offering a higher dividend yield of 1.72% compared to Oracle’s 1.26%.

Awais Iqbal has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Adobe Systems and Salesforce.com. The Motley Fool owns shares of International Business Machines. and Oracle.

The article There’s Always Potential in the Software Industry originally appeared on Fool.com.

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