Is Dell (DELL) planning on following the strategy of IAC (IACI) and MySpace (NWS), to use the slumping economy as the chance to make cheap acquisitions?
Maybe. That seems to be the thrust of Michael Dell's hostile interview with the New York Times. (The second quote in the story is Dell's founder lecturing the reporter: "I don’t appreciate the tone of your reference.")
But we do learn a few things from the story:
Dell executives point to any number of acquisition possibilities: servers and storage systems, software and services. “That is where we have to do an acquisition to become relevant,” [Dell CFO Brian] Gladden said. “There is no question.”
Wall Street analysts speculate that Dell was gearing up to make the largest acquisition in company history. Dell spent close to $7 billion on share repurchases over the last year, while Mr. Dell has also spent his own money buying close to $200 million in Dell stock.
Michael seems not entirely closed off to the idea.
When asked about how critical a large purchase is for Dell’s long-term strategy, Mr. Dell would say only that the company has been making more buys than in the past.
“If you look at the first 22 years of the company’s life, we made basically zero acquisitions,” Mr. Dell said. “In the last two years, we made about nine acquisitions.”
We're not entirely convinced if Dell's strategy is to make more acquisitions, or if that's just a narrative the NYT tried to impose on the company. But regardless, Dell certainly seems open to the idea.
See Also:
Michael Dell: Netbooks Mostly 'Complementary', More 3G Deals Coming
Consumers Prefer HP Computers To Dell 5-To-1: Analyst
