Dell reported a 72 percent drop in profit on Thursday, a month before an expected shareholder vote that could shape the future of the company.
Dell is in the midst of a battle between founder and CEO Michael Dell, who wants to take Dell private, and a group of discontented shareholders who say he must pay more money in order to do so.
As the vote approaches on Michael Dell's joint offer with Silver Lake Partners to take Dell, Inc private, two more large stockholders have lined up to cast their ballots against the deal. The Wall Street Journal reports that Vanguard Group, State Street Corp, and BlackRock Inc, which together own 11.5 percent of Dell Inc's stock, will oppose the Dell/Silver Lake offer of $13.65 a share.
I’m at the Dell Analyst conference this week and the Thursday morning session was all about security.
The track was well attended, likely because a lot of people have become very concerned about security thanks to the news that hackers from China have managed to compromise a number of companies along with US weapons systems under development.
Dell today said it’s ready with new anti-malware defense and encryption offerings for businesses using its PCs, laptops, and Android-based mobile devices.
The improved security is available via the company’s Protected Workspace program for business computing.
Dell's thumb-sized PC called Project Ophelia, which is the size of a USB stick, will start shipping in July for around $100.
The Android-based device will plug into a display's HDMI port so that it can run applications or access files stored remotely. It will have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities and is aimed at users who do most of their computing on the Web.
Dell remains committed to Microsoft's Windows RT, despite the poor market reception to the OS and a decline in prices of related tablets.
The company has "future generations" of its XPS 10 tablet, which runs Windows RT, under development, said Neil Hand, vice president at Dell. The upcoming tablets will be lighter and faster, though Hand did not provide any further details on release dates or specifications of the XPS 10 successor.
Dell has rejected a request from a shareholder rights group seeking to review the internal information that led to the proposed $24.4 billion sale of the struggling personal computer maker.
In a letter Tuesday, a Dell lawyer told the Shareholder Forum that the group hadn't met the legal standard for gaining access to the confidential assessments that swayed the decision-making process of Dell's board.
Dell has announced a deal that will allow the company to go private and Microsoft will soon become a significant stakeholder in the private company.
It will cost Dell $24 billion to go private and they will pay $13.65 per share which is about a 25% premium on the stock from when word first broke about the possible deal.
We first heard back in January that Dell was potentially going private, buying back shares to take it out of the public business market. Today the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the deal has almost been finalized, and the company will reportedly spend $23 billion to buy back stock at between $13.50 to $13.75 a share. Dell has been a publicly traded company since 1988, so this could mean the end of a long era for the #3 PC manufacturer.
For the past couple of weeks, the rumors have been flying that PC maker Dell is planning to turn back into a private company via a leveraged buyout. Things got even more interesting last week when more rumors indicated that Microsoft was interested in putting in some money to help Dell's buyout efforts.
