[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by wizwor

I love this and will be watching carefully. This may be a new model for innovative companies -- raise venture capital to launch a new idea, buy back the stock, and go private.

In my unschooled opinion, this is the cure for stock market speculation. With a majority of the stock held by true fans of the company, the management team can focus on company and products rather than stock price. For the same reasons, I'd love to see these companies reward stockholders with dividends -- a share of the success -- instead of price growth.

Good luck Michael Dell. I look forward to buying a Dell computer that is not built for accountants.

Buybacks aren't new, and they aren't really a cure for speculation, since they are not affordable unless the stock drops precipitously. And often the goal is to later take the company public again.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Dell came back as CEO after the company went off the rails without him. By taking it private again he can now run the company as if it were once again a start-up. Considering the investors he lined up to raise the US$20B worth of money for the buyback he must have a convincing story to tell.
Hopefully it will work; in his day Dell was a very consumer-friendly company that made good PCs at good prices.

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Maybe it will start a trend of more Silicon-Valley companies going private. Have to see how Dell is doing now financially. Except we can't actually see any more how they do financially. They can do whatever they want now. As long as they make 1$ profit a year (after all expenses), they do good. Any more is just a plus. Beeing private they can afford to do that.

It's true that they don't have to satisfy shareholders. On the other hand, they are taking on $15B in debt; they will need to make enough to cover their loan payments.

But I think that a lot of the idea behind this is that Dell is very undervalued (which I can sort of see - $24B for a company as ubiquitous as Dell does seem surprisingly low (without doing any research)).

Originally Posted by cromag

I suspect the commercial server and server support side of Dell's business is becoming the most important segment of their business -- if it's not there already. I'm guessing that's the biggest reason for Microsoft to be interested.

It's my impression that the commercial side of Dell is doing okay; it's on the consumer side that they have struggled as the various tablets, phones, mp3 players, and "upscale" laptops they've offered have crashed and burned.

Dell really was a leader in the configure-on-the-Internet-and-order model of buying computers; I think their ultimate problem is that they basically turned into - on the consumer side - a purveyor of commodity laptops at the $500 level, and their attempts to take their laptops upscale or to expand into other consumer goods failed.

Originally Posted by theducks

4 Dells here (one has a blown PSU. The reason it is not closed back up, is the PSU has a odd/small form factor and I have a normal one hanging outside the case). most are 10 years old

I always bought Optiplex: the 'business' quality line.

Optiplex is what we use at work, too; with no issues.

But I think that's largely true of their consumer computers, too - Dell didn't run into problems because the computers weren't reliable; they ran into problems because their computers were perfectly functional low end laptops: somewhat clunky, somewhat heavy, with and indifferent (but functional) keyboard and a low end (but functional) monitor.