Brown Brothers Harriman analyst William Milton has followed Dan Mandresh and downgraded his rating on IBM Corp and lowered his first quarter and full-year 1993 earnings estimates: he cut his rating to sell from neutral and lowered his first quarter forecast to a loss of $0.72 per share from a loss of $0.45, and his full-year estimate to a loss of $1.10 from a profit of $0.35 a share; he said he made the changes because of sharper than previously expected declines in IBM’s mainframe business and more severe than expected pricing pressures; he also said that a noticeable deterioration in employee productivity contributed to his revised outlook – productivity has fallen given declining employee morale as IBM struggles to restructure; There’s very little a new chief executive can do initially that’s not already being done, he added.
