“At IBM alone, we have thousands of open positions at any given moment, and we intend to hire about 25,000 professionals in the next four years in the United States, 6,000 of those in 2017,” IBM CEO penned this line in an editorial published in the USA Today (12/13/16).
Does anyone really believe that? Let’s look at the numbers.
Net of major divestitures the company’s headcount is down in the last few years.
Including a real reduction in US headcount, as implied by the 401K chart above.
IBM has taken annual workforce rebalancing charge in each of the last six years.
The direction of revenue is likely the single best directional indicator of total headcount (rather than empty promises).
Who believes this stuff?
EDITOR'S NOTE
This is an institutional research note written by Hedgeye Technology analyst Ami Joseph. For access to our institutional research ping sales@hedgeye.com.