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It's a tough day for IBM investors.

The stock plunged 10 percent on Friday following disappointing results that cast doubt on the tech company's turnaround efforts.

Sales missed analysts forecasts in the fourth straight back-to-back quarterly drop.

The company was hurt by a sales decline in its software unit, as clients shied away from longer-term deals due to economic uncertainties brought on by the health crisis.

IBM, the grand-daddy of tech firms, is preparing to split itself into two public companies, with the unit housing the so-called hybrid cloud, where companies use a combination of their own datacenters and leased resources to manage and process data, to retain the legacy name.

The cloud-computing side of the business hit a record last quarter, but that wasn't enough to offset the weakness in other units.

Investors are also concerned about IBM 2021 sales outlook.

IBM has been trying to play catch up in the faster-growing cloud segment of the technology world, where it competes against younger, nimbler players.