Amidst the swirling shareholder revolt over Michael Dell‘s plan to take Dell (DELL) private in a leveraged buyout, CNBC’s Josh Lipton reported on the “Halftime” program a little while ago that he spoke this morning with Pzena Investment Management CEO Richard Pzena and that the Pzena expressed continued skepticism about the $13.65 buyout price.
Pzena, whose firm owns 12.7 million shares of Dell stock, thinks the shares are worth $25, higher even than the $24 mentioned by 7% shareholder Southeastern Asset Management on Friday.
“The price doesn’t reflect the long-term earnings power” of Dell, Pzena tells Lipton. The projected $1.70 per share in earnings this fiscal year “will grow over time,” said Pzena, and the company has “a nice position in the enterprise space” that is not being given full credit by the market.
Pzena had already expressed such skepticism to CNBC a week ago, and back on January 14th, when he was interviewed by my colleague Andrew Bary.
Andrew, by the way, today offers up a piece discussing Southeastern’s letter.
Dell shares today are up 3 cents at $13.66.
Update: Andrew is on fire today as regards Dell news. This afternoon he penned another piece, citing former Goldman Sachs hardware analyst Laura Conigliaro, who is a Dell board member and was on the committee that approved the LBO. Andrew dug up a note from Conigliaro when she was at Goldman in 2007, in which she placed a $35 price target on Dell shares.
No comments:
Post a Comment