To all...I just talked to Michael Dell!
I just had an evening that every bull on this thread would have enjoyed. Michael Dell was the keynote speaker for Engineer Week in Kingsport, TN. It was sponsored by Eastman Chemical Company, where I work and personally installed over 600 Dell Optiplexes...my share of the 7500+ rollout.
He was hanging around informally at the reception hall, and was easy to run into and talk to. He was extremely cordial to all. He signed a copy of his new book, which my wife thought to bring in her purse. It is easy to be a little "star struck" shaking his hand and chatting.
He had a slide presentation on the Internet and Dell's use of it. It was awesome. He is so confident. Slide after slide showing where they are going.
Some key points mentioned:
After a comment on the rapid growth of Dell's Internet sales in the 4th quarter, he quickly pointed out that it looks like the 1st quarter is also going to be another good one.
He sees Dell expanding rapidly into the consumer market.
One slide showed Dell the number 3 PC maker, he laughed and said that will soon change to number 2, that they are now within 10,000 units of the mark.
When asked about Gateway's stores, he reminded us that Gateway is growing 4 times slower.
My 13 year old son asked him what he thought would happen at year 2000. He first said nothing, then said "well something, but nothing to worry about." He said this laughing, as he was leaving.
He said they hired 9,000 last year, mostly right out of school...I think he meant college since this was Engineer Week.
I probably will think of more things, but this is a long post, and I don't want to wear everyone out. But I really came out positively reinforced in terms of holding and buying Dell stock. Good luck all.
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