IBM

9043 IBM Appendix A - FINANCIAL HISTORY

APPENDIX A - IBM FINANCIAL HISTORY

APPENDIX A - IBM FINANCIAL HISTORY.............................................................................................................................................................

The 20^th Century History....................................................................................................................................................................................

Prior to the 1980s....................................................................................................................................................................................................

The 1980s Rental Fiasco........................................................................................................................................................................................

Cost Of Sales............................................................................................................................................................................................................

Employee Numbers.................................................................................................................................................................................................

Special Charges.......................................................................................................................................................................................................

Balance Sheet.........................................................................................................................................................................................................

Funds Flow..............................................................................................................................................................................................................

Historical Accounts                                                                                                                                          

As William G Ouchi observed, it is the beliefs (the implicit rather than explicit controls) which are the key to "Theory Z" companies such as IBM. This book has, therefore, concentrated on these. For the sake of completeness, though, this appendix reviews some of the financial statistics; up to 2000, and (after 1973) based on the figures recorded in IBM's Annual Reports. 

Until the 1980s these gave a good account of IBM's performance. At the beginning of the 1980s, though, facyors outside of the accounts - in particular the switch from rental to outright sale - gave a false impression; which, not least, fooled IBM management into thinking they were doing better than they were. From the late 1980s onwards, howver, the accounts were discretely massaged to provide the picture the management wanted the outside world to see.

Even so, the most dramatic finding, if the creative accounting is discounted, is the fact that (despite it showing a record-breaking loss in its accounts) IBM probably never made an operating loss. The difference was the write-offs the then (Akers) management was taking - in order to get all the bad news (where profits undoubtedly were considerably down) in one year; a technique which had previously saved the management's jobs at the end of the 1980s, but wasn't to do so here!

The 20^th Century History

For the record, therefore, first below are the sales (revenue) and profit (earnings) figures covering most of the last century, annotated with the key events;