IBM Sets Announcement on Monday, Possibly on Chip-Making Unit

IBM executives and the Wall Street analysts who follow the technology giant will be getting up early on Monday morning.

On Sunday afternoon, IBM issued a brief statement saying it would be making an announcement on Monday and that it would also report its third-quarter earnings before the stock market opened.

IBM, like most technology companies, typically reports its earnings after the close of the stock market. The company’s quarterly earnings report had been scheduled for Monday afternoon.

In its statement, IBM did not provide any clue about the nature of Monday’s announcement. But analysts say the most likely possibility is that IBM’s long-running negotiations to shed its computer chip manufacturing operations have resulted in a deal.

IBM began talking to potential buyers of the operations several months ago, including the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and GlobalFoundries. But analysts say that in recent months, GlobalFoundries has apparently been the principal company in talks with IBM.

The financial terms of any possible deal are not known. But Bloomberg News reported this month that talks had resumed after IBM offered to increase the amount it was willing to pay GlobalFoundries to take over the manufacturing facilities, increasing it to more than $1 billion.

Important negotiating points, analysts say, have been over how much or how little IBM intellectual property and engineering talent would be part of the arrangement.

IBM’s microelectronics business accounted for $2.5 billion in revenue last year and lost money, analysts estimate. The company’s total revenue last year was just under $100 billion.

IBM has steadily pulled back from hardware businesses with low profit margins, including by selling its units that made disk drives, personal computers and industry-standard data-serving computers.

But IBM said it had no intention of abandoning the semiconductor business. In July, it announced plans to invest $3 billion over the next five years in advanced semiconductor research and development. The company wants to invent new chip designs while handing over the production of chips to contract manufacturers like GlobalFoundries.

GlobalFoundries was created in 2009 when Advanced Micro Devices spun out its manufacturing operations, and it later acquired the chip factories of Chartered Semiconductor.

GlobalFoundries, based in Santa Clara, Calif., has manufacturing operations in Germany, Singapore and a new chip factory outside Albany, N.Y. Its principal shareholder is the investment arm of the government of Abu Dhabi.