Now That It's Private, Dell Targets High-End PCs, Tablets 167
jfruh writes: If Dell has a reputation in the PC market, it's as the company that got low-end PCs to customers cheaply. But after the great drama of founder Michael Dell taking the company private, the company is following a new path, adding higher-quality (and more expensive) products like the Venue 8 7000, the thinnest tablet on the market today, to its lineup. One analyst notes that "Because they are no longer reporting to Wall Street, they can be more competitive."
board of directors is the problem not Wall Street (Score:5, Interesting)
One analyst notes that "Because they are no longer reporting to Wall Street, they can be more competitive."
The problem isn't Wall Street. Its the board members. And lots of companies thrive just fine as public companies because the board is taking the long view, selects a CEO with vision, and then lets him pursue it.
While you have a toxic board that is only looking to milk the company, selects weak CEOs, and structures management compensation to incent short-term thinking then you've got a problem.
I guess taking it private is one way to get rid of a toxic board, and good for Dell if they can reinvent themselves this way. But the problem isn't faceless "wall street".
Instead, name and shame the Dell board members. They were the ones enforcing the short term outlook.
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Understood.
Yet, for example, Apple is competitive. But Dell is not? The same major 'shareholders' mutual funds, etfs etc hold both companies. I agree that the shareholders elect boards, but each board has a unique momentum and culture despite all being more or less elected by the same people.
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Apple is somewhat special. See, for example [bloomberg.com]:
Institutional ownership of Apple shares has declined as funds question the company’s ability to increase revenue long term, Morgan Stanley said in a report this week. Apple’s 30 largest shareholders own a record low 30 percent of shares outstanding, down from a peak of 40 percent in 2009, according to the report.
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In other words, Apple has managed to get rid of investors who are in it for the money and instead get a bunch of investors who are inves
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The problem is faceless Wall Street, which will sue if they don't feel the CEO is doing their duty to artificially buoy the stock price in the short term. It most certainly is Wall Street that created this culture of "what have you done for me lately?" that guides the decisions of management. It is Wall Street's fault that executive management expects to be paid a hefty amount of stock instead of simple monetary compensation so that the higher ups making the decisions are all rewarded by taking the short po
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The problem is faceless Wall Street, which will sue if they don't feel the CEO is doing their duty to artificially buoy the stock price in the short term.
They will, huh? When has that happened, exactly?
Wall Street is like Regular Expressions (Score:2)
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In short, the analyst should have said "Because they are no longer reporting to Wall Street, they can take more risk."
This sentence from TFA says it all (Score:5, Interesting)
In 2009, Dell caught headlines with its premium Adamo slim laptop, which was considered a competitor to the MacBook Air at the time.
Yes. "at the time." And remember the Dell competitor to the iPod? There are several problems for Dell here. 1) They are a maker of commodity hardware trying to move upmarket. But the fewer units they sell, the worse their economies of scale, so how to really make something special, without having to charge too much? Apple doesn't have that problem, in part because they sell 6-8 figures of even their high-end products. 2) Sure, Slashdot readers may be an exception, but most people who want Android and Windows machines rarely want expensive ones. So most of their target market will either want a cheaper Android tablet, or, if they want to spend more, they'll get an iPad.
I think the best Dell can hope for is to be a niche player, a slightly bigger version of their subsidiary Alienware. 15 years ago, Dell and Microsoft both seemed unstoppable, but both have repeatedly stumbled since then. My, how the mighty have fallen.
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> Desktops are overvalued @200 dollars compared to cheap tablets with 2-4 cores and 1-2GB of ram for ~50 dollars...
Those desktops will still run circles around the tablets once you stray off the reservation. They are good at some very narrow tasks only. The moment you do something interesting that wasn't accounted for in the SoC, you are screwed.
Cheap tablets have to "outsource" any voice recognition to some server across the network.
The overvalued desktop can do that stuff on it's own.
A lot of ARM devic
Follow the money (Score:2)
Re:Follow the money (Score:4, Insightful)
Stupid investors? I just don't understand why people invest in companies that have been taken private by a hedge fund, loaded up with debt and then IPOed. The story is all too common -- the company takes on massive debt, pays a huge dividend to its hedge-fund owners then sells itself on the stock markets. But why buy? It's not going to be a viable company with all that debt.
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Because that isn't what happens.
Hedge fund takes company that has too much debt across to many creditors private. Strikes a deal with the creditors that sees them take a huge haircut to get anything at all. Then they take a massive super sharp machete to the business carving every piece of non-today-essential flesh off. What you are left with is an extremely lean, profitable business which they then list again.
Considerations, all, and I do mean ALL, non essential stuff has been removed. This means ther
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While that may happen some times, there are plenty of examples where the loading up of debt has happened either as a part of goi
"High" end PCs... (Score:2)
High end Ubuntu XPS laptop coming? (Score:2)
Please let this mean the next developer edition XPS is going to be amazing. The current generation is pretty good already but where is my high dpi screen? I hope they are aiming at Apple's turf and I wish them luck.
Because they are no longer reporting to Wall Stree (Score:2)
> "Because they are no longer reporting to Wall Street, they can be more competitive."
Paraphrasing popular song: "If you love your company, do not let it go"
Translation: (Score:4, Interesting)
Dell thinks they can be Apple, but don't have the walled garden that makes it work.
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Dell thinks they can be Apple, but don't have the walled garden that makes it work.
Exactly. Unless they're going to start writing operating systems it's just not going to work.
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except they build Apple gear and have done for years.
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Dell thinks they can be Apple, but don't have the walled garden that makes it work.
So, how does the "walled garden" make the MacBook Air such a popular laptop?
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The Walled Garden is OSX itself. Part of what makes Apple machines popular is how well they run compared to infamous versions of Windows like ME and Vista (pre SP1). Having such tight control of both the hardware and the software helps make this possible. They aren't having to tweak their own hardware or drivers to suit the latest change by a third-party (Microsoft).
I was also talking about the iPod "halo effect". Apple's reputation as being a premium brand is also based on how "exclusive" the whole ecosyst
I'd be willing to pay (Score:4, Interesting)
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I bought a Moto X SPECIFICALLY because it was made in the US.
Great phone, BTW.
Back to their original reputation (Score:2)
Can I get it without Windows 8? (Score:2)
I want an X51 with Windows 7 Pro 64 Bit (they will not sell it with this OS). So I am holding out until Windows 9 Pro 64 Bit is available. I like Dell a lot and would buy an X51 today if they would offer the OS I want. Maybe now that they are private they will work with us?
Kids nowadays... (Score:2)
If Dell has a reputation in the PC market, it's as the company that got low-end PCs to customers cheaply.
Sure, that may their current reputation but back in the early 90s, Dell earned a reputation as a builder of high quality and well-specced computers. I recall working in the electronics department in a large store and running tests against the Packard Bells, ASTs, and Dells and the Dells always won every single benchmark by a large margin.
In short, they were the kings of the 386/486 world. That is how they started. Perhaps they will return...
Crap displays (Score:2)
Hopefully this will result in more laptops with better displays... I'm boggled that manufacturers like Dell are still selling 15+" laptops with 1366x768 displays and have the gall to call them "beautiful" and "high-resolution" in their marketing. WTF.
When I was looking for a new laptop a year and a half ago, I had to look very hard to find 15" laptops with decent ('full HD', 1920x1080) resolutions.
Stop the madness!
Higher Profit Margin (Score:2)
Dell targets people with more money than sense.
Makes sense.
Re: Mind boggling (Score:5, Insightful)
They can focus on long term rather than short term profits.
Re: Mind boggling (Score:3)
You're right, because no computer company has ever turned itself around from almost going bankrupt to being the most valuable company in the US while still remaining public....
Replicating a difficult act (Score:3)
You're right, because no computer company has ever turned itself around from almost going bankrupt to being the most valuable company in the US while still remaining public....
Just because someone else managed a very difficult trick doesn't mean that it is repeatable, likely or a good idea. To use a basketball analogy that's like pointing out that someone else managed to sink a basket from the other side of the court and thinking "why doesn't anyone else do that?" You don't bet the company on trying to replicate the long shot improbable success of another company.
Re: Mind boggling (Score:4, Interesting)
They can focus on long term rather than short term profits.
Wall Street is willing to invest for the long term as long as you have a credible long term strategy. Amazon is a good example. They plow almost everything they earn back into the company, generating very little profit in the short run. The dot com frenzy of the 1990s was an example of long term investing that didn't work out.
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They can focus on long term rather than short term profits.
Wall Street is willing to invest for the long term as long as you have a credible long term strategy. Amazon is a good example. They plow almost everything they earn back into the company, generating very little profit in the short run. The dot com frenzy of the 1990s was an example of long term investing that didn't work out.
No, they really aren't.
In the 1990s, everything thought Amazon was crazy. People invested in it because they knew 2 things:
1. Bezos was blunt about the fact that it would be a LONG term investment.
2. People signed up during the dot com bubble. If you were smart/crazy enough to sign on then, you were smart/crazy enough to stay in (at least as far as the LONG term plan went)
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In the 1990s, everything thought Amazon was crazy
That's not what I remember. I remember everyone in the 90s buying Amazon stock, and their revenue going up and up and up.
Looking at a stock chart now, it seems my memory is correct. Although the stock did have a little problem around 2000, I wonder what happened then.
Amazon (Score:2)
That's not what I remember. I remember everyone in the 90s buying Amazon stock, and their revenue going up and up and up.
Yes it did. However their profits did not. The only reason nobody cared at the time was that everyone else was doing the same thing. The dotcom bubble was a strange little era. Companies with nonsensical business models were going public with ludicrous valuations because everyone was afraid they would miss the Next Big Thing. If you started Amazon today I'm dubious investors would permit the company the same latitude they did back then.
Although the stock did have a little problem around 2000, I wonder what happened then.
The bottom crashed out of the stock market and they nearly got drag
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Wall Street is willing to invest for the long term as long as you have a credible long term strategy. Amazon is a good example.
Good point.
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The dot com frenzy of the 1990s was an example of long term investing that didn't work out.
No. That was gambling in hopes of striking it rich by getting in early on a company that balloons to 1000x PE in the frenzy. It helped that there were a lot of naive day traders around to supply cash for the big fish to gobble up.
Precisely (Score:4, Interesting)
They were mad at Dell because Dell wasn't in Apple's market. Apple was exploding with growth, whereas Dell "only" had a stable market that they did well in. They didn't like all the server sales because that wasn't a growth market with huge margins.
With high end boutique computers would be a similar issue. While margins might be good, volume would be low and would never go up. It will always be a specialty market. Hence not something investors want money being "wasted" on. Doesn't matter there's money to be made, it isn't enough money fast enough with the promise of infinite growth.
Well, sounds like the private investors that own Dell now are a bit more sensible. They realize that there's something to be said for making money in smaller markets.
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The sad part of this is that Dell had already assimilated an up-market brand. There's really no cause for this excuse of theirs that they couldn't target the high end while being public. They already had an up-market label to put on this kind of stuff.
Re:Precisely (Score:4, Insightful)
Except Alienware is niche. Even if it is an up-market brand, it's more closely associated with "gamer kid" than "high fashion". It wouldn't attract the yuppie crowd Apple gets.
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Isn't the yuppie crowd a niche also?
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Yeah, but they're a niche with more money than good sense, which is a prime marketing demographic. Not quite as large and gullible as the teenager market, but lucrative nonetheless.
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Just the opposite, the Apple crowd only buys niche products so when they want a gaming PC they tend to buy an Alienware PC or other niche vendor product.
Dell wants a larger niche group. Alienware is kids with too much allowance. They want adults with regular income and a large portion of it disposable. Up to this point they have been in the race to the bottom with other PC manufacturers.
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the really sad part is that for years Dell have been putting Apple laptops together in their plant in Ireland.
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Having worked for 15 years in publicly traded companies, I cannot tell you how tired I am of the drumbeat of making our quarterly earnings. I have seen a very consistent and substantial focus on short-term profit to the detriment of long-term growth.
Re:Mind boggling (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Mind boggling (Score:5, Insightful)
Share holders want maximum short term profits. This often conflicts with the overall health of the company.
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Except this one actually is I suppose, since I said "every".
Personally the whole concept of shareholders is starting to rub me the wrong way. Large public corporations all too often begin to focus far more on shareholder profits at the expense of their customers and employees. I believe it should be as much about making good product as it is good profit. And certainly treat employees with some respect too, beca
Re: Mind boggling (Score:4, Insightful)
because without them, or customers, there is no company, no matter how many shareholders you have
Very true. But you can't have any employees or customers without shareholders - even if that is one person to start - because somebody needs to make the big gamble and invest the money to get a company started, then continue investing through multiple growth stages to the point where you could even go public.
One interesting point that many Slashdotters overlook is that post-IPO, "shareholders" don't exist for the benefit of the company per se - the buying and selling of a company's shares post-IPO puts no new money in the company's pocket (although share price does help with things like credit ratings, cost of capital, etc.). Having zillions of public shareholders is actually mostly to the benefit of the people who are or were part of the company and as a result were granted shares, be they founders, investors or employees. Without a liquid market for shares, they essentially are worth nothing (just ask someone like me who had a shitload of shares in a pre-IPO startup that were ultimately worth "1 shitload x 0 = 0") if you can't convert them to cash when you want to. Once your company is publicly traded, everyone who was granted shares in the company can either convert their "sweat equity" into actual cash, or see their investment rise or fall with the performance of the company as a whole.
It's no excuse for short-sighted profits-chasing on the part of some companies' executives, but overall being publicly traded has a lot of advantages for the people who actually worked to make the company successful (again, as long as they made sure to get an equity cut, however small).
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Wait so when Dell went private they had to fire all the employees?
That is what you just said. IPO's are a one time cash trick. Companies don't make any more money from wall street after wards unless they spilt the stock or release more shares.
Wall street is a net drain on company resources. The only real advantage is that since your books are open banks are more willing to lend you money.
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Wait so when Dell went private they had to fire all the employees? That is what you just said. IPO's are a one time cash trick.
I don't follow. Can you explain?
Companies don't make any more money from wall street after wards unless they spilt the stock or release more shares.
How does the company profit from a stock split?
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BTW if you wanna know why the market is such a fucking mess you can blame Ronnie Raygun [youtube.com] for forcing the retirement funds of the entire nation to be pumped into the market via 401K and 403B. Remember this next time somebody on the right says putting social security into the market would be a good thing.
Oh man, my brother in law used to be on that kick. Thought it was a great idea to put Social Security into the market. Think of the returns, he said! I replied that we already have 401k's and IRA's that can be in the market if we want those returns, and the fact that SS was not in the market was actually a good thing. When the market tanked in 2008, I asked him again if he thought putting SS in the market was a good idea. Not so much then!
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Re:Mind boggling (Score:5, Informative)
Google Stock Split 04/14/2014, 2 Classes of Shares (Score:5, Informative)
Class-A
Class-B shares have 10 times the voting rights of Class-A, and gives the Class-B holders 61%+ of the voting rights.
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Similiar to what was mentioned in regards to Alibaba, except I think it's only one share type - of which the "Alibaba shares" are actually in a holding company with no voting rights.
I wish more founders kept control of their companies -- they tend to give a shit about "the company" and "the employees" compared to need-to-be-more-rich Board's of Directors.
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If a company fails the owners get paid last.
All stock holders are owners by definition, but the way it's generally supposed to go the more say you have in the running of the company the lower on the list for pay out in case of the company being liquidated. Generally employee wages are paid first*, then bond holders, then other debt holders**, followed finally by preferred stock holders then regular stock.
*Often there has to be a bond/insurance that ensures they're paid.
**Secured debt gets the security.
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I wouldn’t go so far as to say shareholders are shortsighted. It really depends upon who your shareholders are. If your shareholders are hedge funds or people like Carl Icahn then they are as you describe. If your shareholders are individuals or things like pension funds with long time horizons they frequently don’t think that way. I think, in my case anyway, I tend to view it as you describe most of the time because the shortsighted investors are the ones we see the most in the news. They are
Re: Mind boggling (Score:2)
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Quarter to quarter, hmm, a piece of crap this quarter is still a piece of crap next quarter.
The other side of that coin is that business goes in cycles; even fundamentally sound companies don't return bigger profits quarter, after quarter, after quarter.
Case in point: personal computing manufacturers typically have big Q4s. Companies spend the last of the current year's budget, and consumers buy laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc. for themselves or others for Christmas. Q1, by comparison, is always quiet; something that a significant percentage of shareholders always seem surprised by.
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Would they? They do! Examine the screen of your smartphone — is it not drastically better, than what was available 15 years ago? How much is Intel spending on further r
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You're talking about targeted research within their existing product line. Bell Labs, Xerox PARC and others existed to do research on things that weren't even close to core business. The simple fact is there are almost no publicly traded companies today who can dump even a small fraction of their money into researching something that is not directly related to their product line without a shareholder revolt. What exactly do you think Microsoft's shareholders would do if MS announced they were getting int
Re:Mind boggling (Score:4, Insightful)
Wellllll... kind of. When you're publicly traded, it's all about risk and paring down excesses. Shareholders don't want you to take risks. They want you play it safe so their share values don't go down. They want to see that you've cut operating expenses by X in every report. This limits your ability to try new things or market to those niches.
When you're private, you can take as big of a risk as your cash reserves permit.
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Not exactly...it's not that shareholders don't want you to take chances, especially if higher profits emerge down the line....it's who is held accountable.
If you just regularly have meager profits, the worse that will likely happen to you is that the board of directors will fire you - but even that risk can be ameliorated by maintaining good relations with board members, ensuring your friends get elected to the board, keeping aggressive investors from becoming stockholders, and/or getting the rest of the bo
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Shareholders are very happy with risk, as long as the potential profits justify the risk. Nobody would invest in junk bonds if they didn't pay better rates, nobody would invest in Amazon if there wasn't the possibility that it will one day become the largest company in the world...
Amazon is an excellent counter-example. It's a publicly traded stock with ambitious plans that has made money in just one of the previous eight quarters, and yet the stock market values the company at $150 Billion, because they
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Amazon is still measured by short term objectives. Miss one quarter's growth projections and Amazon's shareprice will take a knock. Miss two and they're fucked.
Company growth impacts the balance sheet and increases shareholder value. Profits reduce shareholder value, exchanging it for cold hard cash. Both are a return on investment in the shares.
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Statements like these are mindboggling.... "Because they are no longer reporting to Wall Street, they can be more competitive." Your share holders want you to maximize profits and growth, this rarely results in wanting you to be less competitive...
Only if you treat market rationality as axiomatic, rather than as something that requires empirical demonstration...
It is not beyond the realm of possibility; but it is hardly self evident.
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I think they mean competitive at producing the highest quality devices. Trying to turn the maximum profit does not typically result in the highest end devices, but rather the most profitable ones, which are typically mid-range products with last year's components.
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This is the company with the cows, right?!!? (Score:2)
Meh. Admittedly, I've pretty much ignored all such events since Alienware functionally went a way.
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Management of private companies have more freedom (Score:2)
Not having to appease a multitude of diverse investors does give management more freedom — provided, the company has enough capital without being publicly traded.
Sort of like a tyranny or monarchy — depending on the tyrant/monarch's personal qualities, it can be spectacularly more successful than anything having to answer to the crowd (such as republic or democracy). It can fail spectacularly too, though...
That said, I don't think, Mr. Dell is wrong on this one. There are plenty of people (mys
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You are aware that Volkswagen and Audi are the same company? That A3 you covet is a Polo with different sheet metal.
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That was precisely his point.
I want an A3 sized car. Do I buy a Skoda (cheap and functional), a Volkswagen (moderately expensive and nice inside), a Seat (moderately inexpensive and interesting) or an Audi (expensive and luxurious).
I want a laptop. Do I buy a Dell (business focussed, cheap, functional), an Alienware (gamer focussed, fucking expensive, garish) or a (rich people focussed, expensive, uses carbon fibre, titanium and solid mahogany keys)..
Same company, same product, very different options.
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Alternative explanation:
Dell was driving down profits in order to make it easier (cheaper) to take the company private.
Now it is private, the drive for profits (perhaps long-term profits, not short term) is in top gear.
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Statements like these are mindboggling.... "Because they are no longer reporting to Wall Street, they can be more competitive." Your share holders want you to maximize profits and growth, this rarely results in wanting you to be less competitive...
Short term only, by and large. Small recently listed symbols excepting. Dell is making a gamble on something that used to be a staple in computers, and still is in autos. Develop for the high end, trickle down to the low end.
I really hope it works out for him. Maybe someday "Dude, you're getting a dell!" won't be an insult hurled from one teenager to another.
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Wall Street only wants aggressive growth. All growth is good, more growth is better. So what if it's not sustainable long-term?
Companies are pressured to cut costs to the bone in order to post double-digit profit growth every year. Capital expenditures are discouraged, since they take away from EPS. Enormous executive compensation is perfectly OK, as are share buybacks, but don't dare invest that money in R&D.
Once the company becomes unsustainable and that aggressive growth catches up to it, losses moun
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That transfers the losses from investors to people that just tried to do business with the company that was made to fail.
Come on, that's Goldman Sachs business model!
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And your statement indicates that you are seriously lacking a clue. Wall street is not really interested in "competitive". Wall Street is interested in anything that will drive the stock price up (or down) a buck or two, so that Wall Street can cash in, dump the stock and mark up a few points toward the quarterly bonus.
All of the Wall Street flakes TALK about shareholder value but the old style shareholders are long gone. Shareholders real interests are at the bottom of the list of concerns.
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But in fact it do make a company less competitive - some shareholders take interest in the short term gains, not the long term. Buy a share, cut down on the expenses - company sees a short bump of improved profit, sell shares and make a profit for yourself while the company has been slowed down and left behind the leaders in the competing race of new technology.
It has happened before, it will happen again.
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shareholders only care about how much they can milk for the next quarter, dont provide that they slice you up and sell your ass, they dont give a shit about anything else, even if it kills your company
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Wall street wants profits today not tomorrow. as long as you hit today's numbers your stock goes up.
It doesn't matter if you strip the company of all assets to do it.(in fact that is encouraged). See every stock Carl Icahn has ever talked about.
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HELL, there was an article about this last week talking about how vulture capitalists love to take over sensibly run companies and then trash them for short tern gain. By sensible, I mean that they own their own facilities. This means something like a restaurant chain owning their own buildings.
The vultures will come in, swoop down, sell off the real estate and set up lease back scams saddling the once well engineered company with ugly ongoing operating costs. The proceeds from the real estate sales will be
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The vultures will come in, swoop down, sell off the real estate and set up lease back scams saddling the once well engineered company with ugly ongoing operating costs.
Yes, you see, that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account!
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The vultures will come in, swoop down, sell off the real estate and set up lease back scams saddling the once well engineered company with ugly ongoing operating costs.
Yes, you see, that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account!
Ping!
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That sounds a lot like the plot to Wall Street.
Blue horseshoe loves endicott steel.
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That's what happens when a site becomes too liberal...it becomes full of stupid.
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.
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So put your name to your comment, AC. My experience with Dell has been less than 2% failure over 1000's of Optiplex, Latitude and Vostro units. The main cause of warranty claim has been DIMM at > 80%, PSU at ~18%, MB at ~2%.
A lot of folks whinge about Dell, I suspect that's because these folks would rather roll their own PC. That's fine, until you have to roll 1000 in a week.
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In terms of laptops, it used to be my policy to stay well away from Dell. My thinkpad X61T has been going strong for o so many years, but the dell laptops from that generation were garbage: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/... [thinkwiki.org]
I actually found it cheaper to buy a Dell-outlet-store desktop than to build my own.
Of course that probably doesn't reflect state of affairs today. I am a little annoyed by Dell's inferior Linux offerings. If you want the best deal from Dell, you are paying a Microsoft tax :(
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I can't believe this. My company buys Dells by the dozen and we've never ever received a dud.
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The tablet mentioned in the summary runs Android.
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