Updated from April 17 to include additional information in the tenth paragraph. NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- IBM is taking steps to reinvent its business, but the plan to reinvigorate the top line is going to take several quarters, with little progress expected immediately. IBM's key strategic areas -- mobile, social, data analytics, security and cloud -- are the future of the company, a point that CEO Ginni Rometty and CFO Martin Schroeter have tried to lay out to investors before. In February, IBM detailed to investors how the company intends to turn itself around by focusing on the five key areas. Must Read: IBM Is Aiming for $40 Billion of Revenue From Five Growth Areas TheStreet's Jim Cramer recently said that IBM really needs these areas to work. "IBM has to grow the consulting side of the big four trends, and Microsoft has to push the software side, but none seems to be able to move as fast as, say, companies like Salesforce.com , ServiceNow or Skyworks Solutions ," Cramer wrote.IBM wants the major areas to generate $40 billion in annual revenue over the next four years, up from $25 billion at the end of the 2014. Overall revenue at IBM has declined since 2011, when full-year revenue was $106.92 billion, to $92.8 billion in 2014. The transition to getting these areas to take over the majority of IBM's revenue is going to take time. "We expect rev growth to remain difficult for IBM due to secular challenges," Deutsche Bank analyst Sherri Scribner wrote in a research note, previewing IBM's earnings. Prolonged weakness and stagnant-to-little growth for IBM would be grave concerns on their own, but that's without factoring in the foreign currency volatility IBM and other multinational tech companies have had to deal with in recent months. IBM lowered its revenue guidance for 2015, in part because of foreign exchange concerns, largely due to the weakened euro and rising U.S. dollar. Wells Fargo analyst Maynard Um cautioned that while the strength of the dollar has been worrisome, it's not all bad for IBM, which does hedge against currency shifts. "[W]e expect hedging to, by and large, offset in [first quarter] with potentially good cost controls," Um wrote. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expect the company to earn $2.80 a share on $19.7 billion in revenue for the first quarter. The software and services giant has shed much of its hardware business over the past several years, including the recent sale of its semiconductor business to GlobalFoundries, and the sale of its server business to Lenovo , which also bought IBM's PC business nearly a decade ago. Despite that, IBM still has its mainframe business, which it refreshed in January with the z13 Mainframe. JPMorgan is expecting "flat growth" from this business in the first quarter as the z13 started shipping too late to make a difference, but that should turnaround in the second quarter. As the company focuses on its five growth areas, IBM said it plans to increase spending by $4 billion, excluding acquisitions. Much of the spending will go toward analytics and especially, the cloud. IBM has made several big announcements recently about its cloud efforts, including adding Apple and others to the Watson Health Cloud. Shares of IBM have been battered over the past year, falling 16.4% compared to a 16% gain in the S&P 500. Since the calendar turned to 2015, IBM's shares have done a little better, gaining 1.7% vs. the 2.3% gain in the S&P 500. IBM trades at less than 10 times forward earnings, a 40% discount to the S&P 500. According to JPMorgan analyst Tien-tsin Huang, that valuation is "close to its multi-year trough discount, which should provide support post first-quarter results." Huang rates IBM neutral with a $170 price target. At this point, it seems like more of the same for IBM and its investors -- a wait-and-see approach until the new areas of focus truly become the growth drivers Rometty and her team say they will be.Read More: 11 Safe High-Yield Dividend Stocks for Times of Volatility and Uncertainty
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