IBM will soon reports earnings - and analysts expect revenues to drop, again

IBM will report earnings on Monday and the company is expected to have another fairly mediocre quarter, with shrinking overall revenue and profits.

Analysts are looking for

• $3.78 earnings per share;
• $20.95 billion in revenue.

If IBM meets the street's expectations EPS will be down from $4.43 in the year-ago quarter and revenue down from $24.36 billion.

And that will amount to 13 consecutive quarters of declining revenue, reports The Wall Street Journal.

There might be one big exception, one of IBM's oldest product lines: mainframes. IBM started shipping a new version of the uber expensive and very profitable huge computer in March and in a few short weeks before the quarter closed, sales were good, it reported last quarter. This will be the first full quarter of sales of the new mainframe.

Beyond that, the focus will be on how IBM is doing with what CEO Ginny Rometty calls the company's "strategic initiatives." These are areas like cloud computing, analytics (including Watson), and mobile where IBM is investing like mad. Rometty hopes to grow these new areas big enough to replace the shrinking areas of its businesses.