HEY, THAT'S MY WAVE

摘要

By all accounts, Louis V. Gerstner Jr. has engineered a formidable turnaround at IBM. From an $8 billion loss in 1993 he pushed IBM back into the black, with $7.7 billion in profits last year. Over the same period, Gerstner has increased sales by 40%, to $87.5 billion. So it must really sting when the company slips and turns in weak results—as it did in the first quarter, when revenues were down by 5%—and rivals trot out the old jokes. "We're like two rocket ships passing in the night—one going straight up and the other going straight down," quips Scott G. McNealy, chief of Sun Microsystems Inc., which saw sales shoot up 35% in the most recent quarter.