By Moz Farooque ACCA
Publication Date: 2025-11-21 17:47:00
This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
IBM (NYSE:IBM) had a good reason to smile on Friday after Oppenheimer initiated coverage with an Outperform rating and a punchy $360 price target, the highest anyone on Wall Street has put on the stock so far. Shares were up slightly in early trading, but the real buzz came from why the firm is so bullish.
Analyst Param Singh thinks investors are still stuck viewing IBM through its old legacy lens. In his view, the company’s transformation into a software-first business is finally taking shape, with double-digit growth expected from HashiCorp and improving momentum at RedHat. He also sees IBM’s consulting arm steadying after a rough patch as enterprise spending slowly rebounds.
But Singh’s biggest confidence booster is IBM’s deeper push into AI applications and generative AI tools, an area he believes the market hasn’t fully appreciated yet. With software becoming a larger slice of the business and margins trending…
