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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (164321)	3/7/2001 7:00:18 PM
From: D.J.Smyth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

Bob, is this a test? How many stupid investments have Michael Dell and Tom Meredith made over the past two years? At least they made one investment that has counted - Dell the company. It's too bad they poured money down such a hole. And to think I bought into oil wells in Sudan right before their civil war. but, how could I lose when China Petro was the main investor? there's a ton of bad investments to go around to which Dell and others are not immune.

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (164321)	3/20/2001 2:16:02 PM
From: A.L. Reagan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 176387

Monday, March 19 Dell's venture investments take a beating as stock market slides By John Pletz American-Statesman Staff Monday, March 19, 2001 Dell Ventures, the venture capital arm of Dell Computer Corp., is feeling the depths of the dot-com bust. Dell said when it reported earnings Feb. 15 that its venture capital portfolio was worth about $1 billion, about half what it was worth a year ago. Although some of that has to do with gains that Dell cashed in last year during the go-go days of Internet stocks, there's no escaping the fact that many Net stocks have crashed. Some high-tech companies that also are heavy investors in startups, including Dell and Intel Corp., have told Wall Street recently that the profit windfalls they received when these young companies go public have all but dried up. Gateway Inc. said Feb. 28 that it will take a $155 million loss on Internet investments. While Dell doesn't share many details on the 100 or so companies it has invested in or what's happened to the value of those investments, a glimpse at securities filings provides some insight. Dell's investments in five companies that went public last spring before the Nasdaq's Tech Wreck -- Sina.com, Live Person Inc., Lante Corp., GoAmerica Inc. and Divine Interventures Inc. -- have plunged dramatically. Dell's initial investments of $177.5 million are now worth just $43.6 million. Dell invested in all of the companies shortly before they went public, a strategy that was viewed as much less risky than putting money in early stage businesses. By the time the companies went public in February and April, Dell's investments were riding high, having produced a cumulative gain on paper of 161 percent, or $283.7 million. But as it turns out, even that strategy was still plenty risky. When the dot-com market tanked, many of Dell's investments went with it. Dell bought 3.4 million shares in Lante Corp., a Chicago-based company that develops e-commerce technology. The company went public Feb. 11, 2000, at $20 per share and closed its first day of trading at $54.94. Today, the company's shares are worth $1.59 each. The best-performing investment is GoAmerica, a wireless-Internet company. Dell invested $12.6 million and ended up with 3.2 million shares. The investment is down 21 percent. Dell maintains that it's making money on its venture investments overall, while rivals such as Gateway, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Compaq Computer Corp. are taking losses on their portfolios. "We're still contributing to the (company's) bottom line, albeit at slightly reduced levels," said Dell Ventures spokesman John Thompson. Dell is making fewer investments and being more picky about its investments than it was a year ago because overall quality of deals has declined, Thompson said. But like other venture investors, Dell is less eager to back dot-com companies these days. Instead, it's focusing more on technologies, such as servers and storage, software, network security and wireless that closely align with market opportunities Dell sees for its core computer business. "The trend is pretty clear," Thompson said. "In September and October, we saw a crossover from big-idea dot-coms going down as a percentage of deal flow and a rise in real technology companies, such as hardware and software, where people start out telling you about their intellectual property and a tangible product instead of a business plan. I think it's a healthy thing." austin360.com