The Dow Jones industrial average is singing the Big Blues.
IBM dragged down the closely watched index yesterday as its shares fell the most in eight years — after the company reported late Thursday that first-quarter profits missed Wall Street expectations.
The 8.3 percent decline in the shares of the computer-services company shaved 120 points off the Dow’s performance — as the index closed up just 0.1 percent, or 10.37 points, to 14,547.51.
The S&P 500 closed up 0.9 percent.
IBM closed at $190 — wiping out all of 2013’s gains.
Volume was more than five times the daily average.
For IBM, based in Armonk, NY, the quarterly profit miss was a rare slip.
IBM posted a quarterly profit of $3.03 billion, or $2.70 a share, on revenue of $23.41 billion, a 5.1 percent decline from the year-ago quarter.
The revenue miss was $1 billion off the mark of Wall Street analyst forecasts.
The company said it would accelerate job cuts in order to meet earnings goals this year as the software and computer business in general struggles.
A number of banks yesterday cut their IBM share-price targets, and the sentiment spread to other areas of the tech sector.
Analysts started pointing fingers at other tech bellwethers, such as Xerox, Dell and HP, which threaten to disappoint Wall Street when the companies report their results in the coming weeks.
The Nasdaq closed up 39.70 points, or 1.3 percent, at 3,206.06 points.
Separately, Lenovo Group, the Chinese PC maker, is emerging as the most likely bidder for parts of IBM’s server division, according to a report.
The IBM unit, which sells servers running x86 processors, might fetch $2.5 billion to $4.5 billion, depending on what assets are included in the sales transaction, reported Bloomberg, which cited a person familiar with the matter.
A deal is still several weeks away, according to the report.