To: sandeep who wrote (11479 ) 7/12/2001 5:38:45 AM From: Lee Lichterman III Read Replies (2) | Respond to I actually am not bearish on MSFT but more so on the over all market long term, especially when I see how fast perma bulls can data dump bad news and accept on faith promises that it will get better next quarter, no wait, next quarter, no wait, the quarter after that, no wait..... Remember when tech was immune to the FOMC rate increases, or when CSCO was immune to the slow down? How about when JNPR was immune, INTC, MU, NOK?By my calculations, had Dell wished to keep its share count steady in fiscal year 2001, it would have had to buy back 52 million more shares (on top of the 65 million shares it purchased for $2.7 billion). Using this average price of $41.54 per share, Dell would have had to spend an additional $2.2 billion, for a total of $4.9 billion. Obviously, this was not feasible given that free cash flow was only $4 billion. At Dell, the situation was even more extreme last fiscal year: Had it spent 100% of its free cash flow on buybacks, the share count still would have risen 0.8%. Thus, one could argue that Dell had negative free cash flow for shareholders last year. thestreet.com
