International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) is scheduled to release fourth-quarter 2008 results today at 4:30 PM Eastern. Results will be presented by Mark Loughridge, senior vice president and chief financial officer. To view the webcast of the report, see IBM 4Q08 Earnings Presentation.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expect IBM to report a fourth-quarter profit of $3.03 per share, 7.6% higher than in the year-ago period. Revenues for the quarter are expected to have fallen 2.5% from a year ago to $28.2 billion. IBM earnings have beaten estimates in the past five quarters.

For the full year, analysts are looking for earnings of $8.69 per share on revenue of $104.8 billion, up from $7.13 per share and $98.8 billion in the previous year.

The consensus recommendation of analysts remains to buy IBM, and the long-term EPS growth forecast is 11.2%. The share price is up slightly from the beginning of the year, but about 18% lower than it was a year ago.

See BloggingStocks' IBM coverage for more information concerning Big Blue.

Visit AOL Money & Finance for more earnings coverage.

International Business Machine Corp.'s (NYSE: IBM) headline earnings report looked strong but analysts tore CFO Mark Loughridge apart in last night's conference call.

Global Business Services, which reported good bookings for short-term contracts, missed big on long-term bookings. The long-term contract business has been viewed as a good indicator of IBM's future results. If these long-term bookings are weak, IBM's future revenue could be weak.

It was clear from the call that IBM is having trouble signing long-term services contracts for reasons not clearly stated during the call. One must suspect this business remains very competitive and they cannot sign profitable deals.

In addition, there were some concerns about potential margin compression. While IBM reported good gross margin improvement, SGA was up 10% and R&D was up 8% for the quarter; there is only so much cutting the company can do at the gross margin line. When asked about this trend, Loughridge was evasive.

Further, IBM provided little, if any, guidance.

Also, there are concerns about IBM's linkage to SAP AG (NYSE: SAP), that missed big, as well as the success Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL) is having with its vertical acquisition and middleware strategy.

All told, Loughridge pitched the company, whether intentionally or not, as a company with a healthy balance sheet that generates a lot of cash. For now, IBM is a dividend play at best. Oracle seems the better choice for investing in the enterprise software space.