IBM's stock tumbles as preliminary 2Q results come in below Wall Street's expectations

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Shares of IBM are sliding before the market open on Tuesday as the company provided preliminary second-quarter results that are below Wall Street's expectations.

International Business Machines said that it anticipates a quarterly adjusted profit of $2.93 per share on revenue of $17.2 billion. That's below the $3.01 per share on revenue of $17.86 billion that analysts polled by FactSet predict.

IBM's stock slid down 23% in morning trading.

CEO Arvind Krishna said in a letter to investors that the company's software and infrastructure performance shortfall during the quarter was due to clients shifting their spending toward servers, storage, and memory purchases before anticipated price increases.

Cybersecurity concerns were also a distraction, he added.

“These conditions require our teams to execute perfectly, and this quarter we faltered,” Krishna said. “We did not adapt and move quickly enough, and numerous large deals failed to close on the timelines we expected, driving the majority of our shortfall.”