Merrill Lynch & Co analyst Daniel Mandresh raised his revenue growth forecast and earnings estimates for 1994 on IBM Corp, citing improvements in several of its businesses, going for $1 a share in the third quarter and $1.55 a share in the fourth, up from $1.37 a share; he left 1995 earnings estimates unchanged at $6.00 but expects IBM’s disk storage revenues to accelerate sharply in the second half, especially during the fourth quarter where IBM may ship some mainframe storage devices with 175Tb capacity and that IBM is sold out for the fourth quarter of its new Ramac storage array; in mainframes, IBM remains sold out through the fourth quarter, with new orders for the current ES/9000 family getting 1995 shipping dates – overall, demand for large systems remains solid and profits are well ahead of plan; IBM will also see a substantial upturn in its capacity in the active matrix screens for the ThinkPad notebook computers, which will benefit IBM’s personal computer business, while the Microelectronics business is on track to double from last year’s estimated $700m in revenues; total OEM sales, including chips, should reach $3,000m, he reckons.
