International Business Machines (IBM) delivered a real shock to the market on July 14, 2026. The stock sank more than 25% in a single day after the company warned that its preliminary Q2 results would come in weak. That kind of move is almost unheard of for a company this size and marks its worst one-day drop in decades, even worse than what investors saw around Black Monday in 1987.
Their preliminary revenue for the quarter was $17.2 billion, up just 1% from a year earlier and about $660 million below what Wall Street was anticipating. That’s a sharp contrast to Q1 2026, when revenue grew about 9% year-over-year (YOY) to $15.92 billion and topped expectations.
