News

Dell Board OKs Share Repurchase Plan

Dell Inc. is reviving plans to buy back shares in the company and will begin to repurchase $10 billion in common stock this week, chairman and Chief Executive Officer Michael Dell said Tuesday.

Dell had suspended its buyback program in August 2006 until it could file a backlog of earnings reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Chief Financial Officer Don Carty said there was no time frame for the repurchase plan. He said the company has $15 billion in cash and is generating another $1 billion per quarter that could be put toward the repurchase.

As of Oct. 19, Dell had about 2.24 billion shares outstanding.

"Dell is committed to a long-term share repurchase program as part of an overall capital allocation plan that supports growth and also returns value to shareholders," Dell said in a statement.

At a shareholders meeting Tuesday in Round Rock, investors also approved several measures, including:

  • The election of Carty and 10 other directors;
  • A shareholder proposal regarding executive stock ownership guidelines; and
  • The selection of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as Dell's independent auditor for fiscal 2008.

The company's delayed restatements, filed in October, reduced profits by $92 million for fiscal years 2003 through 2006, as well as the first quarter of fiscal 2007. The restatements were the result of an internal accounting probe, which found employees had misled auditors and manipulated results to meet performance goals.

Last week, Dell posted a 27 percent jump in third quarter earnings sparked by growth in overseas markets like Brazil, solid demand for notebooks and falling prices for memory chips and other components.

Despite double-digit growth overseas, Dell reported a 6 percent drop in orders from U.S. consumers amid competition with Hewlett-Packard Co. and other rivals.

Dell shares, which have ranged from $21.61 to $30.77 in the past year, were down 1 cent to $23.93 in midday trading Tuesday.

Featured

  • Broadcom Revamps VMware Partner Program Again

    Broadcom recently announced a significant update regarding its VMware Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) program, coinciding with the release of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0, a key component in Broadcom’s private cloud strategy.

  • Closeup of the new Copilot keyboard key

    Microsoft Updates Copilot To Add Context-Sensitive Agents to Teams, SharePoint

    Microsoft has rolled out a new public preview for collaborative "always on" agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot, bringing enhanced, context-aware tools into Teams channels, meetings, SharePoint sites, Planner workstreams and Viva Engage communities.

  • Windows 365 Cloud Apps Now Available for Public Preview

    Microsoft announced this week that Windows 365 Cloud Apps are now available for public preview. This aims to allow IT administrators to stream individual Windows applications from the cloud, removing the need to assign Cloud PCs to every user.

  • Report: Security Initiatives Can't Keep Pace with Cloud, AI Boom

    The increasingly fast adoption of hybrid, multicloud, and AI systems is easily outgrowing existing security measures, according to a recent global survey by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and exposure management firm Tenable.