The 3 Biggest Mistakes Warren Buffett Made With IBM

Berkshire Hathaway has sold off the vast majority of its stake in IBM, and in hindsight, it’s fairly clear which assumptions and errors led Buffett astray on this investment.

Mistakes Warren Buffett Made

Warren Buffett is waving the white flag on IBM (NYSE:IBM). After years of touting the tech titan as one of his best ideas, Buffett ditched nearly all of his stake in the company this past quarter. His holding company Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK-A) (NYSE:BRK-B) dumped 94.5% of its IBM stock, leaving it with 2.05 million shares, or about $300 million in the company. At one point, Berkshire’s stake in Big Blue topped $10 billion.

The move signals the end to an odyssey that began in 2011 when Buffett first bought shares of the IT specialist, surprising his followers as he had historically avoided tech stocks. The so-called Oracle of Omaha endorsed IBM due to its history of executing on earnings goals and called it a value play. However, IBM’s share price has actually fallen 18% since he accumulated much of his stake at the end of 2011, while the S&P 500 has more than doubled in that time, gaining 116%.

That poor result is a reminder that even the wisest of investors can make mistakes. Here are three of the biggest ones Buffett made when it came to IBM.

1. Focusing on past achievements

Buffett explained his decision to buy IBM to CNBC in 2011, saying that the company had a pattern of laying out a road map of goals every five years, and consistently knocking them down. Buffett also gave credit to previous CEOs like Lou Gerstner and Sam Palmisano. However, in focusing on the company’s track record and past management, he seemed to ignore the structural changes that were about to take place under new CEO Ginni Rometty as the company fought for position in cloud services and dumped its legacy businesses.

Back in 2011, IBM guided for EPS of $20 a share by 2015, up from $11.52 in 2010. However, that goal soon became more of an albatross than a guiding light. The promise was made by Palmisano, but was tasked to Rometty, who was named CEO in 2011. During the intervening years, IBM’s revenue growth turned negative as enterprise customers switched from traditional IT solutions — IBM’s strength — to cloud-based technologies. To try to meet the goal, Rometty aggressively bought back shares, laid off workers, and sold divisions, but it wasn’t enough, and the strategy hurt both morale and the company’s performance. IBM eventually backed away from the $20 goal at the end of 2014, and ended up reporting just $14.92 in EPS in 2015.

The lesson here seems to be that past performance does not determine the future, especially in a fast-changing industry like tech and also when a new CEO is at the helm.

2. Cheering share buybacks

Normally, investors aren’t happy to see their stocks fall, but Buffett turned this logic on its head in his 2012 shareholder letter. “We should wish for IBM’s stock price to languish throughout the five years,” he wrote, due to the company’s penchant for share buybacks. Lower stock prices make share buybacks more efficient, of course, as they allow companies to repurchase a greater amount of shares for the same amount of money.

However, Buffett seemed to be mistakenly focusing on the goal rather than the process. Share buybacks are easy to do, and are often a sign of management’s lack of ideas. Prior to 2015, Rometty aggressively repurchased shares in the hopes of meeting the $20 EPS goal, but that did nothing to shore up the underlying business.

In 2014, IBM spent more than $12 billion on buybacks, and for a time the company was spending more on buybacks and dividends than it was bringing in in free cash flow, funding the difference with new debt. Spending on research and development, though, was flat. The company lost ground to competitors, and its revenue and profits fell.

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Article Credit: The Motley Fool

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