GTW will be a $5 stock, if that, in one year after MSD and da boyz is done with 'em.
The retail store strategy is a disaster, as is them getting into the "rent-to-own" business. They will continue to bleed cash.
While MSD has wasted plenty of his own and shareholder's money on "new economy" investments that didn't turn out too well, as he said this past week, there is zero interest in buying a competitor.
As I posted a couple of weeks ago, this little Andrew Neff fantasy that GTW will get bailed out by DELL, is just that. There is NOTHING GTW has that DELL needs. Nothing.
There is nothing DELL needs from HWP or CPQ either.
I think there is potential for a co-branded IBM PC by DELL, if you will, which would allow Blue to make a graceful exit from the fulfillment end of the business, while maintaining some product differentiation and the ability to fully service its enterprise customers.
I continue to believe that DELL will make a good short candidate in the high 27 low 28 range, for the short run as DELL really applies the margin screws to the rest of the industry; and that for the patient, there is nothing all Ted Waitt's horses and all Ted Waitt's men can do to put broken GTW back together again. Their strategy is one of retrenchment, in addition to unwinding "beyond the box" they are also retreating from numerous international markets. When you shrink both the top line by retreating from markets, and are forced to shrink gross margin % due to brutal competition, in the PC biz, your goose is pretty much cooked.
It is not inconceivable that in a couple of years DELL could enjoy 2x the market share of its nearest rival in desktops. |
