IBM beat with 5% revenue growth and $7.8 billion free cash flow; software recovered, but unchanged full-year guidance implies a weak fourth quarter. At 21 times earnings, one host would buy for hidden value as his best quantum-computing bet; the other would not, preferring better quantum approaches and no tech now.

We will also talk about IBM's results.

When we return, we will talk about IBM and what facts it may reveal. We wanted to conclude our episode today with IBM's financial results. The company announced its results over the past twenty-four hours.

The stock was slightly lower at the time of recording this episode, down 25% since the beginning of the year. Of course, this is the enterprise software consulting sector. It exceeded expectations with revenue growth of 5%.

As for profits, it achieved strong results, with free cash flow reaching $7.8 billion.

However, Lou, you might be pointing to something that the rest of the market doesn't really realize yet . Well, yes, I found CEO Arvind Krishna's comments more interesting than the financial quarter itself.

We could talk about the same financial quarter, but look , Krishna simply said that clients are increasingly focused on return on investment. I don't think we should be surprised by that, especially in the field of artificial intelligence, but he was very frank and blamed it for some of the disappointing results this quarter.

Now, there are a million ways you can explain this . It may be that IBM is really bad in this respect, and that it's just an IBM problem, but I don't think that's true. I think Krishna's comments are correct , and that there is greater opposition to pricing in the institutional market, and more questions about exactly what we get for our investment compared to what it was like six months ago, for example.

My feeling is that IBM is in a unique position that allows it to tell the truth here. They are not as fully immersed in this field as the giant cloud computing companies , or like Jensen Huang and Nvidia.

All these people are telling us: "Don't worry about it." "The demand is unlimited." IBM is in a different part of the business where they can be more honest.

We don't know for sure what's going on, but I think that, by focusing on the bigger picture, we at least need to look at whether he's right, and what that means for our assumptions about these companies' reliance on spending to generate a return on investment, or the idea of unlimited demand and unlimited pricing power, and how that reflects on the demand for data centers and everything they need, down to this fragile structure on which perhaps everything is based.

Well, I'd like to take you back to the second quarter, because after IBM's results in that quarter, this goes into what Lowe said about telling the truth. IBM's stock took a heavy hit.

The biggest concern in the second quarter was that the most profitable parts of the business, such as the software sector for example, which was the main reason they exceeded revenue expectations this quarter, were more discretionary than people feared.

For example, due to higher memory chip prices, some IBM customers postponed their spending on consulting services in the second quarter, causing them to fail to meet expectations.

So in the third quarter, especially with regard to the software side of the business , consulting remained steady. That remains a concern. But the software sector in particular helped to calm investors' concerns on this issue.

This was even brought up in the conference call. Was this a case of lucky timing in the deals, or is it just a kind of return to normalcy after the second quarter? The software has comfortably exceeded expectations.

It has the highest profit margin and the most established part of the business. It was a real revival. So, the software recovered.

But the important thing I noticed, and it applies to many of the companies that have announced their results so far in the second quarter, is that IBM beat expectations in the third quarter, as I mentioned, but did not raise its expectations for the whole year.

When you beat expectations in the third quarter and keep your forecasts the same, you are implicitly suggesting that the fourth quarter will be weak. This is simply how the accounts work.

Oh, that has scared investors a lot, and makes you think that revenues are a bit irregular because clients pick and choose when to spend money on consulting and software services , and when they should focus that elsewhere within the AI sector on memory chips because they are in short supply and their price is currently high.

So, it was a strong chapter. They did what they had to do. I am more confident in IBM's strategy for the next two years than I was before the report. But the fourth quarter will certainly be a pivotal moment for them.

Lou says that perhaps they tell the truth here more than other companies. Things may be slowing down in the artificial intelligence industry. Just go along with me for a minute.

Let's assume that these semiconductor companies are about to flood the market with devices , which will cause device prices to fall. Could this actually lead to an increase in the deployment of on-premise artificial intelligence?

So, this will be an artificial intelligence system at your workplace, and will that actually be a helpful factor for IBM's business given its large size in the consulting field?

Yes, that could happen. I don't think this is the only possible path , because local publishing also has some practical drawbacks. If it's not essential to my work, do I really want to go through the trouble?

And you know, that will be an individual decision. I think that's possible. I think again that this whole optimistic case consists of three parts, and it increasingly appears that one of these parts must be wrong.

Either the suppliers of basic tools win , or the cloud computing providers (hyperscalers) win, or companies achieve greater efficiency. There is an inherent conflict between these three , and I believe it will resolve itself at some point .

Yes, I think that lower chip prices and things like that will have a net positive impact on IBM in this respect. As you know, IBM relies on its clients having budgets for services such as AI consulting , which have remained stable because they have to divert a large portion of their budget to other areas.

So, if you don't have to shift a lot of your budget towards memory and the like, I'm not sure that local AI will rise sharply in that case.

But in reality, you'll see that many companies need help deploying artificial intelligence , and that's IBM's specialty. They need help in this area, but as you know, you have to spend money on memory first.

If you don't have to spend a lot of money on chips and the like, you can redirect a lot of the money towards companies like IBM.

One last question, which we will answer very quickly . IBM's stock is worth 21 times earnings, Matt, would you buy the stock at this level?

Yes, I believe IBM has a lot of hidden value, and I consider it my best bet on the direction of quantum computing. I've mentioned that a few times. And you, what will you do? I think I have better approaches to quantum computing, and I'm not really interested in any technology right now for the reasons we've discussed, so the answer is no.