----OT----
charger, I tend to agree, but Michael Dell was pounding the table again today, and brought DELL back from the depths. 41 may have been gutter bottom for this fine company. I hope so, I am very long it, and bought more today.
Top Stories: Austin Notebook:
Dell Sees No End to PC Era
By Eric Moskowitz
Staff Reporter
10/8/98 1:00 PM ET
AUSTIN, Texas -- Ignoring the pummeling that his
stock has taken over the past two weeks, Michael
Dell was upbeat about the PC industry and the
future of his own company, Dell (DELL:Nasdaq).
Speaking to almost 100 reporters and editors
Thursday morning at the Society of American
Business Editors and Writers conference, the
former newspaper salesman said the end of the PC
industry is not here.
"We don't see this as the year the PC market blows
up," said Dell. He pointed out that the company's
growth rate over the first half of 1998 -- 70% --
was higher than its 1994 to 1997 growth rate of
59%. With growth like this, Dell needn't enter the
sub-$1,000 PC market.
In 1994 Dell exited the retail consumer market,
even though it was, and still is, the
fastest-growing part of the PC industry. "People
said the move would launch us into obscurity," he
said. Now with the pressure to re-enter this
market resuming, Dell argued that it wouldn't be
best for his company's shareholders to do so,
especially in light of the recent tech backlash
that has knocked more than a third off Dell's
stock in the last two weeks.
Early Thursday afternoon, Dell was off about 15%
to 43 1/4, leaving it 38% below a split-adjusted
record high of 69 1/4 reached at the end of
September.
"We still feel that the corporate market and our
expansion in global markets is best for our
shareholders in the long run," Dell said. The
company is placing a big bet that it can replicate
its direct sales model overseas, even in currently
unstable places such as China and Latin America.
Dell said his company sold 3 million units in
China last year, and he expects the company to
grow by 29% a year through 2002.
"I can see China surpassing Germany and even Japan
as the No. 2 fastest-growing market," Dell said.
After all, there are 1.3 trillion people in China,
so even if just one out of every 300 people buys a
PC, that's still a lot of PCs, he said.
He also said the corporate market will remain
robust thanks to the year 2000 problem. While a
recent chief information officer survey by Merrill
Lynch hinted at a decrease in IT spending in 1999,
Dell said companies were still installing software
applications and would need new computers to do
this. As an example, he said the Federal Aviation
Administration just requested $100 million more to
buy new hardware to install new year
2000-compliant systems. |
