The number 14 played a big role in IBM’s earnings on Monday — and not in a good way.
The technology company reported that its net profit fell 14 percent in the third quarter from a year ago, with revenue also declining 14 percent. It was the 14th quarter in a row that IBM had posted falling sales. The company lowered its earnings forecast for the year.
The results were a reflection of the gigantic task facing Virginia M. Rometty, IBM’s chief executive, who is trying to shift the tech company into faster-growing fields like cloud computing, data analytics and artificial intelligence, writes Steve Lohr. He noted that Ms. Rometty has “candidly said that this year will be one of difficult transition.”
On Tuesday, another tech chief executive facing a turnaround task will also be in the hot seat: Marissa Mayer, who heads Yahoo. The company reports its quarterly financial results on Tuesday, signaling whether Ms. Mayer has made any progress in making the web portal relevant again.
The news for Yahoo going into this earnings announcement has been lackluster. The company recently had a setback from the Internal Revenue Service about taxes involved in a planned spinoff of shares it owns in Alibaba Group, the Chinese Internet giant. Yahoo has said it intends to go ahead with the spinoff.
Then on Monday, the mobile payments start-up Square said that it had hired Jacqueline Reses, Yahoo’s chief development officer. Ms. Reses’s departure was the 12th exit by a key Yahoo executive over the last year, according to Robert Peck, an Internet analyst at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey.