Buy Or Sell IBM Stock Ahead Of Its Upcoming Earnings?

IBM (NYSE:IBM) is set to publish its earnings report on Wednesday, July 23, 2025. Over the past five years, IBM has shown a pattern of achieving positive one-day returns in 63% of the cases following its earnings releases. The median positive return during these periods was a notable 4.8%, with the highest one-day positive return soaring to 13.0%.

For those traders focused on events, while the actual results compared to consensus and expectations will be essential, an awareness of these historical trends can potentially provide an advantage. Traders typically utilize two main strategies when addressing IBM’s earnings:

Pre-Earnings Positioning: Taking into account the historical probabilities, one might opt to create a position prior to the earnings report’s release.
Post-Earnings Positioning: Conversely, after the earnings release, traders can evaluate the relationship between immediate and medium-term returns to inform their positioning.

The current consensus forecasts for IBM’s forthcoming earnings stand at $2.66 per share on revenue of $16.58 billion. This reflects an increase from the year-ago quarter, which saw earnings of $2.43 per share on revenue of $15.77 billion.

From a fundamental standpoint, IBM presently has a market capitalization of $265 billion. Over the past twelve months, the company generated revenue of $63 billion, attained $10 billion in operating income, and recorded a net profit of $5.5 billion.

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See earnings reaction history of all stocks

IBM’s Historical Odds Of Positive Post-Earnings Return

Here are some insights regarding one-day (1D) post-earnings returns:

There have been 19 earnings data points noted over the last five years, with 12 positive and 7 negative one-day (1D) returns recorded. In total, positive 1D returns occurred approximately 63% of the time.
Interestingly, this percentage rises to 64% if we examine data for the last 3 years instead of 5.
The median of the 12 positive returns is 4.8%, while the median of the 7 negative returns is -6.6%

Additional data for the observed 5-Day (5D) and 21-Day (21D) returns following earnings is summarized alongside the statistics in the table below.

Correlation Between 1D, 5D, and 21D Historical Returns

A relatively less risky approach (though not beneficial if the correlation is weak) is to assess the correlation between short-term and medium-term returns following earnings, identify the pair with the strongest correlation, and execute the corresponding trade. For instance, if 1D and 5D exhibit the highest correlation, a trader can position themselves “long” for the subsequent 5 days if the 1D post-earnings return is positive. Here is some correlation data derived from 5-year and 3-year (more recent) history. It is important to note that the correlation 1D_5D pertains to the relationship between 1D post-earnings returns and the ensuing 5D returns.

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