While the super-bulls of IBM Corp among the analysts added in the $200m to $250m writedowns the company disclosed in its conference call in New York on Friday morning to get an operating profit of about $2.50 a share – making their forecasts look correct, the more cautious did not and stuck to the $2.26 a share figure on the grounds that IBM, notorious for the paucity of disclosure in the headline figures it reports to the market (you do get it all in the 10Q and 10K filings and the annual report, but by that time the quarter is history), usually makes such writedowns every quarter but doesn’t break them out.
