Anurag Rana

It is a bit shocking.

I mean, for them to be, you know, total growth rate of 9% and software in double digits.

I mean, we were not expecting that.

So there's a lot to peel in that particular one and go back and see, you know, which segments outperformed.

Now, there's a tiny bit of M&A there, but even without that, I mean, I think this is very good.

And the big number for us is that the cash flow is going to go up by a billion dollars next year.

So I think IBM's turned them around very well.

I think the strategy is executing well, and Arvind's done a good job in this case.

I think there's nothing wrong in going through acquisitions if you don't pay enough for them, if you pay the right amount.

And in this case for IBM, every two years they'd go out and buy something that would help their gross margins, that would help their adjusted EBITDA, that would help their free cash flow, and they use that cash flow to buy more.

But they're already concentrated in certain areas such as hybrid cloud or the ability to make sure that the internal infrastructure of a company or the enterprises

is something that they have a good handle on.

And I think they're executing it very well.

But the consulting division only grew up 1%.

So even though they are getting a lot of that, as you said, 80% of those bookings from consulting, it's not driving the entire division up because as we know from some of the other vendors and we'll find out today also, the non-AI IT spending is pretty bad right now.

throughout the ecosystem so people are cutting back on that and deploying those funds into ai related services and that's something that's hurting ibm as well but imagine even with consulting growing only one percent their total company growth rate was nine percent and i think that's something to you know be proud of

Well, the thing is, think about it this way.

The backlog is up and the capex is up.

Then why isn't growth accelerating?

And I think that's the biggest question for all of us.