I received the hard copy of IBM’s 2011 annual report a few weeks ago but only got around to reading it today. I always enjoy reading the annual reports of companies I am already invested in. It gives me the opportunity to revise if the reasons why I bought shares are still valid, and if the company is still worthy of my investment.
Inception
I got the idea to invest in IBM (IBM:US) from Marvin Schwartz, the vice-chairman of Neuberger Berman, in the beginning of 2010. At the time I was
working for a Portuguese asset management company, and I traveled, with one of
my bosses and a Client, to Geneva to attend a conference set up by UBP. That was
the first time I set foot in Geneva, who knew 3 or 4 months afterwards I would
be moving there!
Anyway back to the story. At the conference, we
listened to lots of presentations, mostly from fund managers. Usually these
presentations are not very interesting because they all look the same: fund
managers show you 10 to 15 slides with the structure of the company and investment
process and on how they have an edge. After that you are usually shown one or
two stocks the fund owns (that are working out well of course).
