On Wednesday, IBM reports first fiscal quarter earnings, with its Partner Plus program, acquisition strategy and movement in quantum computing likely discussion topics from executives.

Along with these topics, CEO Arvind Krishna and Chief Financial Officer Jim Kavanaugh are likely to discuss:

*IBM Security ahead of RSA Conference 2023

*Any effects from the uncertain economy and financial sector on Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM

*Any effects from IBM’s layoffs announced in January

IBM’s most recent fiscal quarter ended March 31.

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IBM 1Q Earnings

The pressure’s on for Krishna and Kavanaugh. Credit Suisse predicts revenue for IBM’s first fiscal quarter of $14.46 billion in revenue. That’s still a 2 percent increase year over year, but lower than the firm’s initial expected revenue of $14.58 billion “due to increased macro uncertainty during the last weeks of” the first quarter of 2023, according to a Thursday report.

Morgan Stanley issued a report April 11 saying that topline results should line up with expectations, but “any small blemishes in the quarter are likely to result in post-earnings stock weakness” and decrease confidence in IBM reaching full-year expectations.

Bo Gebbie, president of Minneapolis-based IBM partner Evolving Solutions – No. 165 on CRN’s 2022 Solution Provider 500 – recently told CRN in an interview that hardware, artificial intelligence (AI) and security have been top of mind for his IBM clients.

“I couldn’t tell you a mainframe conversation that doesn’t involve security – whether that’s on the compute side, the storage side, and most often it’s both of them,” he said. “So that’s been important.”

Here’s what else you need to know before IBM’s first-fiscal-quarter report Wednesday.