INDUSTRY

J.P. Morgan Securities overnight raised its rating on IBM to "overweight" and downgraded Hewlett-Packard Co. to "neutral." The ratings changes were "primarily driven by our incrementally more constructive view on IBM's enterprise share gains and margin profile." Shares in IBM were offered higher and H-P offered lower in London, dealers said, but neither was seeing active trade. The broker told clients it expected an "in-line September quarter" at IBM, adding "but we have become incrementally positive on our fourth quarter and calendar 2005 outlook." on HP, the analysts said: "HP's current enterprise cost structure does not appear equipped to handle the rapid shift away from proprietary UNIX systems toward lower margin industry standard server."