IBM

International Business Machines Corp.

DOUBTFUL — SCREEN DOES NOT PASSstock

Is IBM Halal?

Enterprise technology with a material conventional financing arm and a current debt-screen failure.

What You Should Know

IBM provides enterprise software, hybrid-cloud tools, consulting, mainframe and infrastructure products, which are generally permissible technology commerce. IBM Global Financing provides client loans, installment receivables, leases and working-capital financing; net financing receivables are $13.523 billion. Debt/assets are 42.48%, so the examined total-assets methodologies fail.

⚠️ Concerns

  • IBM Global Financing provides conventional loans, leases and working-capital financing
  • Net financing receivables are material at $13.523 billion
  • Debt/assets are 42.48% and above the examined limits
  • Operating leases, pensions, derivatives, acquisitions and supplier arrangements require continuing review
  • Government, defense, surveillance, AI, cybersecurity and customer end use remain qualitative diligence questions

Current quantitative Sharia screen

Based on 10-Q figures for the period ended 2026-03-31; calculated 2026-07-13.

USD · millions
Interest-bearing debt / assets
42.48%Above limit
Below 33.333% under FTSE Yasaar

66,361 / 156,229

Cash + interest-bearing securities / assets
7.54%Within limit
Below 33.333% under FTSE Yasaar

11,783 / 156,229

Receivables + cash / assets
20.53%Within limit
Below 50% under FTSE Yasaar

32,078 / 156,229

Non-compliant income / revenue
2.24%Within limit
No more than 5% under FTSE Yasaar

357 / 15,917

FTSE Yasaar
v4.6, February 2026
Financial
Fails
Overall
Fails

Debt is 42.48%, above the examined FTSE 33.333% asset limit. Identifiable liquidity is 7.54%, receivables plus cash are 20.53%, and disclosed interest income is 2.24%; those other ratios are below the examined limits, but the debt failure is decisive.

MSCI Islamic (total-assets series)
October 2024 methodology
Financial
Fails
Overall
Fails

Debt is 42.48%, above the examined MSCI total-assets limit of 33.33%. Liquidity is 7.54% and receivables plus cash are 20.53%. This is a calculation against the named method, not an index-membership claim; business allocation is also incomplete.

Malaysia SAC financial ratios
single 5% activity benchmark adopted November 2025
Financial
Fails
Overall
Fails

Debt is 42.48%, above the examined Malaysia SAC 33% financial limit; identifiable liquidity is 7.54%. This is a calculation against SAC ratios, not an official SAC classification of a U.S.-listed security; contract-level financing activity remains unresolved.

Market-cap denominator methods
MSCI M-Series, S&P and Dow Jones methods differ
Financial
Not calculated
Overall
Not calculated

A properly licensed and reproducible historical market-cap series is not stored, so these methods are not estimated from a current spot price.

Business-activity disclosure

IBM provides enterprise software, hybrid-cloud tools, consulting, mainframe and infrastructure products, and related services, which are generally permissible technology commerce. IBM Global Financing also provides client loans, installment-payment receivables, sales-type and direct-financing leases, and working-capital financing, making the qualitative verdict DOUBTFUL for investors who treat conventional lending or material interest-based finance as disqualifying.

Limitation: The filing discloses financing receivables, financing revenue and interest income but does not isolate every loan, lease, fee, customer end use or prohibited-revenue category into a universal numerator.

Purification

IBM discloses $357 million of interest income, or 2.24% of quarterly revenue, but the filing does not allocate every Global Financing loan, lease and fee into a fixed purification percentage. Readers should follow the scholar or methodology they use; no fixed percentage is prescribed here.

Inputs, assumptions and primary sources
  • Debt uses IBM's reported short-term debt of $8.655 billion and long-term debt of $57.706 billion. Operating lease liabilities are not entered as conventional interest-bearing debt here.
  • Cash uses $10.819 billion of cash and cash equivalents. Current marketable securities of $964 million are separately identified as interest-bearing securities for the liquidity calculation.
  • Receivables use $6.493 billion of trade receivables, $1.242 billion of other accounts receivable, $6.510 billion of short-term financing receivables and $7.014 billion of long-term financing receivables. Including IBM Global Financing's material loan and lease portfolio avoids hiding it in a narrow trade-receivable numerator.
  • Revenue uses $15.917 billion for the three months ended March 31, 2026: $7.052 billion software, $5.272 billion consulting, $3.326 billion infrastructure, $220 million financing and $48 million other revenue.
  • The $357 million disclosed-interest input combines $205 million of IBM Financing segment interest income and $152 million of corporate interest income reported in other income. It is not combined with investment gains or interest expense.
  • IBM reports $13.523 billion of net financing receivables, including client loans, sales-type and direct-financing leases, and commercial financing receivables. The filing does not provide a universal scholar-approved prohibited-revenue numerator for every financing contract.

This is a reproducible financial screen, not a fatwa. A failed total-assets screen can coexist with a pass under a market-cap methodology. ZakatInvest keeps the qualitative assessment separate so numerical thresholds do not erase material context.

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