Another Round of Cuts at IBM; Earnings Due Today : Downsizing: The trims are being made through voluntary buyouts and attrition, the firm says.

International Business Machines Corp. announced a new round of job cuts Monday on the eve of what analysts believe will be the computer giant’s return to quarterly profit.

IBM, which is expected to report first-quarter earnings today, said the job cuts were being made through voluntary buyouts and attrition, primarily in marketing.

The reductions began Friday and will continue through July.

The world’s biggest computer company declined to say how many jobs will be eliminated. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Armonk, N.Y.-based company is looking to slash 4,500 positions and could be ready to exceed its stated job-cutting goal for 1992.

IBM has already said it plans to cut 15,000 to 20,000 employees this year, but Marianne Wolk, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co., expects deeper cuts.

“We have heard they are being more aggressive,” Wolk said. “We expect the number to be between 20,000 and 30,000.”

IBM stock was up $1.25 a share at $87.25 on the New York Stock Exchange.

The company, once a mecca of job security, cut 29,000 positions in 1991, a dismal year that was marked by a first-time annual loss of $2.83 billion and the launch of a huge restructuring program.

IBM’s new corporate structure makes managers accountable for profits generated by their divisions and compensates them accordingly.

Analysts said the structure has led the company to take a “bottom-up approach” to job elimination by weeding out unproductive employees.

The company, which lost $1.38 billion in the fourth quarter of 1991, is expected to report first-quarter net profit of 90 cents a share. A year ago, IBM earned 93 cents a share or $532 million on an operating basis, on revenue of $13.5 billion.

“We’ve been here before with IBM,” said John Jones, an analyst at Salomon Bros. Inc. “We’ve had three false starts on a long-term recovery. I hope this is the one.”

The company’s results for the first quarter of 1991 were marred by a huge accounting charge for retirement benefits, and underlying profit from operations amounted to only half the expected sum.

It was the first in what would become a string of disappointing quarterly results.

Wolk said her earnings model for this year’s first quarter assumes that equipment sales will match those of the year-ago period, with no growth until later in the year.

“We’re all waiting for the turn in equipment,” she said. “I’m hoping for growth in the next several quarters.”

Wolk has a first-quarter forecast of 80 cents a share, while Jones set his estimate at $1 a share.