International Business Machines Corporation IBM → Kyndryl Holdings, Inc. KD
| Parent | International Business Machines Corporation IBM |
|---|---|
| Spinco | Kyndryl Holdings, Inc. KD |
| Status | Completed |
| Structure | Spin-off A filing states a pro-rata distribution: holders receive shares automatically. |
| Focus | Focus-increasing Parent and spinco operate in different industries — the class the research associates with stronger post-separation returns. |
| Ratio | 1 Kyndryl share for every 5 IBM shares |
| Parent retains | 19.9% |
| Checked against EDGAR | 2026-08-22 |
Data trap
Two traps. IBM retained 19.9 percent of Kyndryl, so only 80.1 percent of the roughly 223.9 million shares was real float on day one and the rest sat as a known overhang. Separately, Kyndryl moved its fiscal year end from December to March shortly after separating, which produced a transition-period report and breaks naive year-over-year comparisons for anyone lining up quarters.
Still live.
Catalyst clock
- 2020-10-08Separation announced
- 2021-09-28Form 10 filed
- 2021-10-12Form 10 last amended
- 2021-10-14Form 10 effective
- 2021-10-25Record date
- —When-issued trading opens
- 2021-11-03Distribution
- 2021-11-22First standalone earnings
- —Index inclusion announced
Performance since separation
| Kyndryl Holdings, Inc. since separation | -52.43% |
|---|---|
| International Business Machines Corporation over the same window | +93.91% |
| S&P 500 (SPY) over the same window | +64.77% |
| Russell 2000 (IWM) over the same window | +25.70% |
| Excess over the S&P 500 | -117.20% |
| Excess over the Russell 2000 | -78.13% |
Measured from the first regular-way close on or after the distribution — 2021-11-04 at 26.38 — to 2026-08-21 at 12.55. Window: 4.8 years. The 2021-11-03 session was skipped: it traded on when-issued volume, not regular-way, and pricing from it would measure the return against a market that no longer existed the next day. Two benchmarks, because one is misleading: spin-offs are usually small companies, and across this period small caps lagged the S&P by several points a year on their own. Measured against the S&P alone, roughly a third of any shortfall is company size rather than the separation. Returns are arithmetic over end-of-day closing prices. Unlike every other figure on this page, they do not come from a filing.
Pre-distribution investor return
| Parent, announcement to separation | price history starts after the separation |
|---|---|
| Combined (International Business Machines Corporation + Kyndryl Holdings, Inc.), pre-distribution to now | +97.46% |
| Combined excess over the S&P 500 | +31.68% |
| Combined excess over the Russell 2000 | +69.52% |
Combined treats a pre-spin holding as 1 Kyndryl share for every 5 IBM shares valued at the parent's last close before regular post-spin trading resumed — 2021-11-02 at 120.63 — against that same basket today. That baseline is a practical proxy, not an attempt to isolate exactly how much value the separation transferred: for a large parent and a small spinco, ordinary day-to-day price noise can be bigger than the transfer itself.
Filings
Every fact on this page comes from one of these.
- 10-12Bfiled 2021-09-28 · 0001104659-21-120290Initial Form 10 registration statement
- 10-12B/Afiled 2021-10-12 · 0001104659-21-125040Final amendment; Ex-99.1 information statement carries the 1-for-5 ratio, the October 25 record date, the 19.9 percent retained stake and the 223,920,187 share estimate
- 8-Kfiled 2021-11-04 · 0001104659-21-134456Item 5.01 completion: distribution effected November 3, 2021, IBM delivered 80.1 percent of shares to the distribution agent
- 8-Kfiled 2021-11-22 · 0001104659-21-142595Item 2.02 first results release as an independent company
Notes
IBM's separation of its managed infrastructure services business, the largest spin-off in its history. The distribution took effect at 5:00 p.m. Eastern on November 3, after the close, so regular-way KD trading began the following session — the return here is measured from that first regular-way close, not from the distribution date's when-issued price. Classified focus-increasing: IBM said explicitly it was separating to concentrate on hybrid cloud and AI, and the two businesses sit in different industries.