Tag Archives: Dell’s
Who is Dell’s board working for?
Are boards ultimately responsible to shareholders? And, if so, which ones? FORTUNE — Carl Icahn announced this morning that he has entered into a confidentiality agreement with Dell (DELL), which means he gets to play around in the data room with the The Blackstone Group (BX) and other potential bidders. The company’s special committee already told Icahn that if he wanted the company he should just make a bid — rather than agitating for a special dividend — so perhaps that’s what he’s considering. I wrote about the special dividend proposal , from the (theoretical) point of view of Dell’s board. That prompted an insightful email from a public company director …
Dell’s Inspiron Sale Screwup Enrages Buyers
Customers are fuming at Dell Computer after the company’s widely promoted laptop sale went off the rails on Black Friday. The Austin-based PC-maker oversold its widely promoted “doorbuster” laptop deal — a 14-inch Inspiron 14z marked down to $ 299 from $ 599. Now, instead of canceling or delaying orders, Dell is trying to pass on a different, bigger model to customers. In nearly two dozen emails to The Huffington Post on Wednesday, some anguished customers said Dell’s delayed and minimal response to the issue prevented them from scooping up other laptop deals. Some reported losing out on cash-back deals with their credit cards after Dell switched their orders. Other …
A Look Ahead at Dell’s Earnings
One of those analysts is Chris Whitmore of Deutsche Bank Securities. With demand for personal computers still soft, he expects a tough quarter, where Dell reports sales that come in a little light of the Street view. “We believe the company’s top-line results this quarter were impacted by weak PC demand in Consumer, small and medium businesses and the Enterprise, partially offset by relative strength in the Federal and Public [sector] demand,” he wrote in a note to clients Wednesday. Also, Europe continues to be weak both for PCs and IT spending as a whole. The good news, he says, may come in Dell’s profit margins. He expects gross margins …
Good News, Dell’s Enterprise Business Is Growing. Bad News, PCs Not.
It’s not that there wasn’t good news, it’s just that there wasn’t enough of it to outweigh the bad news. Dell, as you know, has been trying to reorient itself away from its core PC business and toward what CEO Michael Dell has described as an end-to-end enterprise IT hardware, software and services company. He’s talked about this strategy numerous times, including once in an interview with AllThingsD, as have several of the executives on his team, including Chief Commercial Officer Steve Felice, Steve Schuckenbrock of Services and Marius Haas and John Swainson, who run Dell’s Enterprise and Software units. So the good news is that that strategy is at …
Dell’s deals focus on simplicity — Washington Technology
In September Dell paid $ 2.4 billion for Quest Software, which makes tools for systems management, security, and managing application. I was getting briefed about what the Quest deals means in the public sector when the Dell executives mentioned Gale deal – which I hadn’t heard about — after I asked about future acquisition plans. Jere Carroll, general manager of Dell Federal, connected the dots for me. “If you look in the rear view mirror, you see a trend,” he said. IT managers across any enterprise – government or private sector – are faced with ever increasing complexity in their IT infrastructure, so Dell wants to bring tools that simplify …