The stock market doesn't quite know what to do with International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM). Shares of the century-old tech company have been treading water since before the pandemic. As of July 10, IBM stock is just a few percentage points off from where it traded five years ago.

A lot has changed in those five years, though. Notably, IBM poured $34 billion into the acquisition of Red Hat to boost its hybrid cloud business, and it spun off its slow-growing, low-margin managed infrastructure services business. The IBM of today is starkly different than the IBM of five years ago.

These moves, part of IBM's decade-long transformation effort, have made the company simpler and more focused. Revenue growth has returned, and free cash flow is on the rise. Even in a tough economy, the critical products and services IBM sells to its enterprise client base are in high demand.

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Source Fool.com