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JPMorgan upgraded IBM to Overweight and raised price target, citing stronger software growth expectations.
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Salesforce launches AIforce at Dreamforce 2026 as Benioff takes aim at Microsoft Copilot
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IBM Software Growth Slows as Q2 Organic Revenue Stalls
IBM's Software business slowed in the second quarter of 2026, with revenues up 5% year over year to $7.8 billion but organic revenue growth flat, as weakness in the Transaction Processing business drove an 8% revenue decline there. The company attributed the shortfall to customers shifting capital spending toward servers, storage and memory to secure supply-constrained infrastructure ahead of anticipated price increases, which left several large software deals unclosed within the expected timeframe. Still, roughly 80% of annual Software revenues is recurring, and Red Hat remained a key growth engine, with Hybrid Cloud revenues up 11% and OpenShift ARR reaching $2.2 billion, while the Data business grew 19% year over year. The acquisitions of HashiCorp and Confluent strengthened IBM's automation, data and hybrid-cloud capabilities, and Software segment profit rose 9% to $2.5 billion with segment margin up 110 basis points to 32.2%. IBM faces competition from Microsoft, whose Productivity & Business Processes segment generated $37.8 billion in June-quarter revenues, up 14% year over year, and from Oracle, whose cloud revenues surged 47% in USD and 46% in cc to $9.9 billion even as its Software revenues fell 2% to $6.8 billion.