IBM Stock Up 159%. Learn What Arvind Krishna And Quantum Mean To $IBM

IBM stock is up 159% since CEO Arvind Krishna took over – with a 5% pop September 25 after a huge bank announced IBM’s quantum computer improved bond price predictions, according to Business Insider.

Since taking over as CEO, Krishna has presided over expectations-beating quarters which boosted IBM’s market value. This follows the tenure of Ginni Rometty who led Big Blue through years of declining revenue – sending the stock down 38%.

Will IBM shares rise further? Although the company’s growth rate is modest, the stock could rise more. Here are three reasons:

• Krishna’s better track record of beating and raising.
• Krishna’s superior corporate strategy and leadership approach.
• Possible upside surprise from quantum computing.

“IBM has been executing on an incredibly focused hybrid cloud and AI strategy, the two most transformational technologies for our clients and partners worldwide,” noted a September 26 email from an IBM spokesperson.

Krishna’s Better Track Record Of Beating And Raising

My theory is stock prices rise if companies beat expectations and raise guidance. Krishna’s tenure has featured more of that than Rometty’s did.

Since Krishna took over in April 2020, IBM had a mixed performance regarding “beat and raise” reports. The company consistently beat earnings per share expectations, but often fell short on revenue. In addition, Big Blue did not consistently raise its full-year guidance since he became CEO, noted Google Finance.

While imperfect, Krishna outperformed his predecessor. Beginning in 2012, IBM entered a long period of declining revenue that extended for more than five years. By the end of 2016, the company had experienced 19 consecutive quarters of declining sales, Google Finance reported.

Krishna’s November 2021 spin-off of Kyndryl – IBM’s essentially not-growing $19 billion managed infrastructure business – helped IBM focus more on AI and hybrid cloud. The result was stronger revenue performance and occasional guidance raises between late 2023 to the present.

For example, the second quarters of 2024 and 2025 featured revenue beats and guidance increases. In Q2 2024, IBM exceeded analysts’ revenue forecasts and raised its full-year guidance for software revenue growth due to stronger AI demand, according to Reuters.

In Q2 2025, IBM beat expectations and lifted its free cash flow outlook above $13.5 billion for the year due to confidence in the company’s hybrid cloud and AI trajectory, Seeking Alpha reported.

By contrast, IBM fell short in the first quarter of 2025 due to federal contract cuts for IBM consulting – sending Big Blue’s stock down about 7%. Despite the disappointing results, IBM maintained its roughly 5% growth target for the year, noted Reuters.

IBM is excited about its future. “We once again exceeded expectations for revenue, profit and free cash flow in the quarter,” Krishna stated in a release.

“IBM remains highly differentiated in the market because of our deep innovation and domain expertise, both of which are crucial in helping clients deploy and scale AI. Our generative AI book of business continues to accelerate and now stands at more than $7.5 billion,” he added.

Krishna’s Superior Strategy And Leadership Approach

IBM’s solid stock price increase and improving earnings performance flow naturally from Krishna’s superior corporate strategy and leadership approach.

Conversely, Rometty talked about how IBM should catch up in cloud services but four years into her tenure, revenues were down 22% and Warren Buffett had lost $2 billion on his Big Blue bet, noted my December 2015 Forbes column. Moreover, employee morale was poor due to quarterly layoffs she imposed following below-expectations results, according to my June 2013 Forbes story.

While Rometty’s background was in sales, Krishna combined three decades in technical roles at IBM with strong leadership skills.

This background helped him to make shrewd changes to corporate strategy – shedding Kyndryl and spearheading IBM’s $34 billion Red Hat acquisition and other deals to modernize the company’s software offerings.

He boosted IBM’s competitive advantage in the hybrid cloud – which restored investor confidence in the company’s growth prospects, Investopedia reported. Krishna also launched WatsonX which enabled IBM to provide generate AI services to enterprises – building a large and growing revenue stream, Reuters noted.

Krishna’s management style bodes well for IBM’s longer-term future – which depends on the company’s ability to develop new products that deliver superior value to customers.

His deep involvement in technology and innovation has revived IBM’s long-dormant ability to take calculated risks. The cultural change underlies IBM’s new cloud and AI services – notably WatsonX’s open source models – which attracted developers, noted Reuters.

More generally, under Krishna IBM has become faster moving, less bureaucratic and more open to partnering and ecosystem development, according to More Than Moore.

This transformation echoes how CEO Satya Nadella changed Microsoft when he took over from Steve Ballmer, as I wrote in a January 2020 Forbes column. Finally, analysts credit him for “restoring IBM to its former glory,” noted Cloud Wars, by energizing the company’s R&D engine and focusing on high-value businesses.

Possible Upside Surprise From Quantum Computing

Quantum computing – which uses qubits to enable managers to evaluate nearly limitless scenarios for the future far more rapidly than classical computing does – is moving further from science fiction and closer to a significant business for IBM.

IBM has achieved $1 billion in cumulative quantum revenue since 2017. However, the company may not see significant quantum revenue increases until late this decade. That’s when IBM intends to launch the first error-corrected quantum computer, IBM Quantum’s Vice President Jay Gambetta said in a 2025 Investor Day Presentation.

IBM cited Boston Consulting Group research envisioning quantum computing as a $500 billion industry “at tech maturity,” according to the 2025 Investor Day Presentation.

Given these efforts to excite investors about quantum computing’s potential, it comes as little surprise that IBM’s stock rose 7% this week after HSBC announced it had pulled off the world’s first quantum-powered bond trades, according to Business Insider.

The bank reported a 34% improvement rate using multiple IBM quantum systems to predict the probability of winning customer inquiries in Europe’s bond market. “Working with a team from IBM, HSBC leveraged an approach that utilised quantum and classical computing resources to deliver up to a 34 percent improvement in predicting how likely a trade would be filled at a quoted price,” HSBC noted in its statement.

The trial’s results demonstrate quantum computers’ ability to optimize Request for Quotes sent by traders to liquidity providers by applying “statistical models and other algorithmic strategies to estimate the likelihood of a trade being filled at the quoted price,” reported Business Insider.

Given the size of the global bond market, HSBC’s significant performance improvement is likely to attract interest from other market participants – boosting the odds IBM will exceed investor expectations.

In retrospect, Buffett should have bought IBM stock on Rometty’s last day as CEO.