To date we have estimated the FCFE for IBM.  This is our estimate of the current “economic dividend” that IBM could pay during a period and existing shareholders would be as well off at the end of the period as they were at the beginning of the period. 

To assess intrinsic value we need to forecast what the future FCFE is likely to be.  We turn to this task next.  In doing so it is convenient to work on a per share basis so we will divide FCFE by the average number of shares outstanding.

Working with the 2009 10-K consolidated income statement exported to Excel the shares outstanding for IBM is 1.341 billion.