Dell Is Officially A Private Company
APTo no one's surprise, Dell is now a private company.
The shareholder vote was this morning, and the majority voted in favor of Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners' $25 billion bid to take Dell private.
Shareholders will receive $13.75 per share and $0.13 cent dividend on each share. That's more than Michael Dell's team initially proposed, but a fued with billionaire hedge funder and large Dell stakeholder Carl Icahn made them up the bid.
Dell's stock has been tanking since 2004, when the PC market became saturated. Now smart phones and tablets are killing the PC market altogether. Dell has spent the past few years investing in its enterprise solutions business. In other words, creating solutions and software for small to mid-size companies. But PC sales still account for nearly half of Dell's revenue, according to its last earnings report.
Dell is interested in the enterprise space because the margins are higher and it's too far behind on mobile to catch up. All of its mobile attempts, like the Dell Streak tablet, have flopped.
Michael Dell founded the company in 1984 from his Texas dorm room. He plans to keep his current board in place and the executive team has a tough task ahead of it. It will likely need to invest heavily in R&D, make smart acquisitions, and say a prayer if it wants to dive head first into enterprise.