Overview
- IBM fell 13% on Feb. 23 to $223.35, its worst single-day drop since 2000, and is down roughly 27%–29% for the month.
- The slide followed Anthropic’s blog highlighting Claude Code for COBOL modernization, stoking worries about mainframe and legacy-services revenue.
- IBM said it already offers watsonx Code Assistant for Z and argued that code translation is not the same as system-level modernization, a point emphasized by SVP Rob Thomas.
- Jefferies analyst Brent Thill kept a Buy rating with a $370 target, calling the decline a near-term sentiment issue, and the average target near $338 points to potential upside.
- IBM also unveiled a Deepgram collaboration to bring speech technology into watsonx Orchestrate, while coverage underscored strong free cash flow and dividend coverage.