Slashdot Mirror
Now That It's Private, Dell Targets High-End PCs, Tablets
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."
They can focus on long term rather than short term profits.
Share holders want maximum short term profits. This often conflicts with the overall health of the company.
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.
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.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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).
"95% of all Slashdot
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.