“Dell Inc’s Michael Dell revealed on Thursday he had once considered taking the company he founded private, sending shares in the No. 3 PC maker surging as much as 6.4 percent,” Gabriel Madway reports for Reuters.
“The comment caused the stock to spike a half-hour before the market’s close on speculation about a buyout premium, but analysts said many pieces would have to fall in place for such a deal to happen,” Madway reports. “Kaufman Bros analyst Shaw Wu said Dell going private was not out of the question, but said it would take plenty of outside financing and would not change the company’s structural problems or necessarily improve its ability to compete with the likes of Hewlett-Packard Co. and Apple Inc.”
“According to data compiled by Thomson Reuters, Dell is the largest single shareholder in his namesake company, with an 11.6 percent stake,” Madway reports. “The company has been shedding jobs and cutting costs as it focuses on profitability over growth, and Dell has been trying to diversify its business away from its core of low-margin PCs. But PCs still account for roughly half of the company’s revenue. ‘I think this is a company that can grow its operating income in dollars pretty substantially and that’s our intent,’ Michael Dell said at the investors’ conference.”
MacDailyNews Take: On October 6, 1997, in response to the question of what he’d do if he was in charge of Apple, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell stood before a crowd of several thousand IT executives and answered, “I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”
Here’s a brief history lesson for Mikey:
• Apple now worth more than Dell – January 13, 2006
• Apple now worth double Dell’s market value – July 27, 2007
• Apple now worth triple Dell’s market value – December 06, 2007
• Apple now worth quadruple Dell’s market value – May 01, 2008
• Apple could buy Dell outright; Mac-maker has more cash on hand than Dell is worth – October 21, 2008
• Apple now worth quintuple Dell’s market value – February 12, 2009
• Apple now worth sextuple Dell’s market value – October 20, 2009
• Apple now worth seven times Dell’s market value – January 26, 2010
• Apple now worth eight times Dell’s market value – May 21, 2010
• Apple now worth nine times Dell’s market value – June 01, 2010
So, seriously, who cares what Michael Dell “thinks?” Whatever he “thinks,” the opposite is likely to happen. A schlock PC box assembler is a schlock PC box assembler.
Madway continues, “In 2009, Dell made its largest acquisition, buying technology services provider Perot Systems for $3.9 billion. When asked about the company’s future M&A deals, Dell said there is ‘not necessarily’ a high probability that the company would make an acquisition of more than $2 billion, instead focusing on smaller deals.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Les S.” for the heads up.]
Maybe he made his comment so that the “analysts” would manipulate the stock upwards, before Dell sells off his remaining shares.
@Mark. I think you’re onto something.
From that picture, doesn’t Dell look like some kind of glorified grocery store stock boy? Really, the Dell company isn’t much more than that either… make your order, they stuff it into a box and deliver it.
Potatoes or CPUs?
“What goes around comes around”.
When Steve Jobs came back to Apple, Apple picked up a new OS from Steve Jobs company NEXT. It is the foundation of everything that Apple does today that Dell lacks.
This game is over and Dell and the others think things may still turn around. Do they really think anyone will miss Windows once they have left the Dark Side? What would Dell have to offer to bring them back? RIMM uses buy 1 get 1 FREE. DELL could try that!
Eyes too close to each other.
I loved him in The Wonder Years.
Sorry, Michael who?
The guy owns 10% of a failing commodity PC box manufacturer. Who cares what he thinks?
Funny actually. I’m pretty sure 10% of Dell is worth only a touch more than 1% of Apple.
Maybe the funnier you look the worse your company does? Seems to be true… Jobs looks normal and does well…. Ballmer looks like a bafoon and is doing bad… Dell looks like someone squeezed his face in just at the eyes and messed up one of his eyebrows… and you can see how well they are doing..
Chunk (goonies) & Fred Savage
My prediction…
Dell and other junk pc makers rush out the door with a cheap $200-$300 iPad killer. And then BOOM Apple drops the price of the entry level iPad to $200-$300.
Dell is taking his lumps now, but he at least gets credit for first developing the mail order method for buying computers, at least in a major way.
Dell? What do they make?…….. Oh yeah that Piece of Crap the gov makes me use everyday.
Sure, Dell did pioneer the mail order system that most companies then adopted. But, the problem is that they hinged their entire business on selling in volume. So, when they aren’t selling x million machines, they’re circling the bowl.
@Scott:
You’re right. That’s the other part of the equation.
@Macromancer …….. LMAO.
A good move would be to sell off the box business to Acer or someone else and concentrate on the Perot Systems acquisition. Right now in that arena he is competing with Xerox, HP and IBM, all who are running under essentially the same strategy, but with his hands tied behind his back with the box business. Shed the POS box business and move on. Your best days are long over Michael.
@ Bev M,
Apple could knock $100 off the iPad price, but they won’t.
PC makers can’t bring out a $200 to $300 iPad Killer until they find an iPad competitive OS.
Like that’s going to happen sometime soon.
Name one thing of value Dell provides that is unique in this world.
(sound of crickets…)
I was sitting I the room when he said this. The question was “would you consider taking the company private?”. He simply said “I have considered it”. Nothing more, nothing less.
scott,
2 points, Dell hardly invented direct PC sales (though they are widely credited in the idiot PC press with having done so: revisionist history?), Second their business model required more than just volume, that they could have sustained. It required rapid growth, like a chain letter or pyramid sales scheme, the only way they remained profitable (for the years that they did) was via market share increases (something that is obviously unsustainable)
I knew dell computer was doomed when I saw a charlie rose interview with dell. In the interview he showed himself to be a completely visionless idiot better suited to hawking cars or medical supplies than to running a corporation. (last time I looked you could still see that interview online, it was about a decade (+) ago)
LOL, Dell pioneered the mail order PC business. I guess people think that when they start out on Windows Vista. News Flash: History actually goes back a little further than 2005.
@Mr. Reeee
Potatoes or CPUs?
Well, it’s chips either way…
yah should put wat did michael dell give back duhh!!!!!