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

To: rkral who wrote (174886)	5/18/2005 11:35:18 AM
From: Ali Chen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

Ron, "So I was off by a factor of 4 ... while you were off by a factor of 8. I suppose I should say "Just returning a favor" here. <g>)" No, you are incorrect :-) I said "mostly 10-yrs-old shares". My $8 value is obviously an average of "mostly" $.98 Y96 shares and apparently some $20 or $30 shares granted later but matured by today. In contrast, you have made an explicit statement about average exercise prices for a specified period. So, all favor is mine :-) :-) "Whoa there! You're the one who tried to determine a small number of options exercised by taking the difference between two big numbers. How do you propose to do that without using 4-digit resolution? WAG it?" Fair enough. But it was you who asked me to estimate the number from available "data". I think I did well from my first WAG. "You're assuming the weighted average shares outstanding during a quarter can't be the same as the shares outstanding at the end of the quarter. It does happen from time to time ... and it did happen for Dell's F05Q4. .. Shares outstanding at the end of a financial period may usually be found on the balance sheet." So, this "end" number does exist for F05Q04 quarter, but it does not exist for F06Q01? Somehow I feel more and more that all these reports numbers are pulled out of ass... pardon my French. Taking your example of weighted averages, now you are saying that the end number for the last quarter can be anything, including a possibility that it is bigger or equal to 2485M "end shares" - they could buy 50M at the beginning, but then daily shares climbed up due to option exercising, resulting in the average of 2456M. Could it be the reason that this F06Q01 "end" number is not immediately available? The point remains, the reports are so obscured that it is impossible for an investor to determine the truth. We can try to inverse intergrals of stochastic functions as long as we wish with likely zero success. Yet the company knows, precisely, how much and when those options were exercised, and therefore the correct level of "compounded" labor expenses is known precisely to them. They try hard to conceal this number in financial reports, for obvious reasons. This was the essence of Forbes Magazine conclusion few years back, and I completely agree. - Ali