Boringly solid is a bad thing?!?

IBM announced its 4Q 2004 earnings yesterday afternoon. The earnings were $1.80 per share, solidly beating the Street's projection of $1.76. Yet the stock dropped close to 2 points in the day since the results were reported. The reason? Apparently IBM wasn't exciting enough. Analyst Laura Conigiliaro from Goldman Sachs characterized the outcome as "another boringly solid quarter." Since when was solidity a bad thing in the business world? Generally beating both your revenue (by $.27 billion) and profit expectations is a good thing. But for some reason IBM investors (of which I am one) and executives are being punished by the market because the results weren't flashy enough? And people wonder why executives have incentives to take dangerous risks or act illegally.