The company has witnessed a sharp fall of 13% in its equity and it is the biggest intraday loss that IBM has ever experienced since the year 2000. This caused the security to fall by the recent highs to a price of US $223.35 by 24 February 2026, and hence wiped away nearly US $31billion of market value overnight.
The Trigger
The most important stimulus to accelerate sell-off was the introduction of the Claude Code programming AI tool created by Anthropic. Shareholders were worried that the new product goes directly head-to-head with the core consulting units and hybrid-cloud delivery lines of the company, which are both dependent today on human-centered AI deployment.
Respondent investor fears were further heightened by the recent quarterly earnings statement of IBM which showed a slowdown in growth in these segments and also by indicating lower revenues than expected by analysts.
This has seen the share price decrease by 28.6% in a 27-day period with the price dropping by US $312.95 on 2 February, to the current intra-day low making the company vulnerable to its worst monthly performance since 1968.
Historical Pattern
Past experience has indicated that IBM has been able to recover after experiencing precipitous declines. The company had only had one instance in 2010 with a 30% plus decline over three days, after which it started to recover with a median peak increase of 42% in a year, and only took an average of 84 days to regain its previous high.
The maximum post-dip drawdowns were rather shallow, not more than -4.4%. Basic financial metrics still confirm the structural strength of IBM, such as the stable growth of revenue, constant profitability, the stability of the cash-generation, and balance sheet.
Expert Take
According to a Trefis Team analyst, IBM meets the criteria of quality rebounds, but the risks of implementation are high in an era of acceleration of the development of AI.
Given that organizations want to see faster payoff on AI investment, the WatsonX platform, provided by IBM, will have to value itself better than agile rivals like Anthropic.
Buy the Dip?
The short-term volatility in the market persists, as the rotation goes towards the quantum-technology startups and fixed-income securities. The yield of dividends and past resilience by IBM however bring about a measured attractiveness.
They are expected to generate revenue of US Additionally, it is projected that the revenues will reach US $71.2billion in 2026, and the growth rate of the revenues will be 5.5%, and the free cash flow will be US15.7billion.
Critical analysis shows an opportunity: at current valuations, IBM is closer to being a turnaround investment rather than a legacy one. The first-quarter guidance of hybrid-cloud expansion as indicated by forward-looking investors, which may enable 30-40-% upside in case of precedent patterns to be followed, ought to be observed.