International Business MachinesCustomers redirected budgets to AI servers, causing infrastructure revenue to fall 7% and mainframe deals to fail.

IBM shares dropped 24% on July 14, marking the steepest one-day decline since Black Monday in 1987, after the company unexpectedly released preliminary second-quarter earnings a week early. CEO Arvind Krishna said the company faltered as customers redirected technology budgets toward AI servers, storage and memory, causing infrastructure revenue to fall 7% while software revenue rose 5%. Preliminary revenue was $17.2 billion, up 1% from a year earlier, but Krishna acknowledged IBM did not anticipate the magnitude of the capex reprioritization. The shift also hurt sales of the flagship z17 mainframe, with several large deals failing to close before the end of the quarter. IBM is scheduled to release final quarterly results on July 22.
International Business MachinesCustomers redirected budgets to AI servers, causing infrastructure revenue to fall 7% and mainframe deals to fail.