IBM Trending With Analysts As AI Defensive Play

Analysts are intrested in these 5 stocks: ( (IBM) ). Here is a breakdown of their recent ratings and the rationale behind them.

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International Business Machines Corp. is getting fresh attention from Wall Street as analyst Fatima Boolani initiates coverage with a Buy rating and a $285 price target. She describes IBM as a “port in the storm,” arguing that in a market hostile to many enterprise software names, IBM’s long history and entrenched role in global IT make it a safer way to play the AI wave.

The report highlights IBM’s deeply layered mix of hardware and infrastructure software embedded in the world’s largest, most complex systems. Boolani sees this as a kind of scaffolding that lets customers reliably build and scale the next generation of AI technology stacks, without taking on the heavy capital spending that weighs on hyperscalers and newer cloud players.

Recent deals such as the HashiCorp and Confluent acquisitions are seen as key to IBM’s AI strategy. The analyst believes these transactions can unlock cross-portfolio product and consulting synergies, using IBM’s broad distribution network to push new AI-driven solutions, while also supporting a lucrative mainframe upgrade cycle and long-term opportunities in quantum computing.

Financially, Boolani forecasts steady acceleration in total revenue to high single-digit growth over time, supported by healthy upside to earnings per share and free cash flow as recent M&A is integrated more efficiently. She argues that IBM’s expense structure is poised to improve, giving management more room to invest in growth while still rewarding shareholders.

The analyst addresses the “elephant in the room”: IBM’s heavy reliance on software and consulting, areas many investors fear could be disrupted by AI. Her counterpoint is that IBM is focused on infrastructure software, which she views as stickier than pure applications or SaaS, while the consulting arm can actually harness AI to boost efficiency and serve as a forward-deployed engineering team for AI-native partners. Despite IBM’s relative outperformance versus large software peers this year, she notes the stock still trades at a notable discount to the broader mega-cap tech cohort, making the roughly 20% expected upside look compelling to investors hunting for an AI “survivor” with cash flow strength.