Dell Q1 2014 Income Tumbles 79 Percent as Sales, Margins Slip

Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) elected to push up its Q1 2014 financial report by three business days from its scheduled May 21 date, amid accounts that it would post disappointing results and wanted to get the news out sooner rather than later. As expected, Dell missed Wall Street expectations—net income for the period tumbled 79 percent and per share earnings fell 81 percent. Sales and gross margins both slipped some 2 percent.

Overall, for its fiscal Q1 2014, Dell recorded $14 billion in revenue, a 2 percent dip from the $14.4 billion it posted in the same period last year. The vendor earned $130 million during the quarter, a precipitous 79 percent fall from the $635 million it took in a year ago, with per share earnings falling from 36 cents a share a year earlier to 7 cents a share for Q1 2014.

You might want to call it the Carl Icahn and Southeastern Asset Management effect, although Dell didn’t, preferring to point out that revenue from its Enterprise Solutions, Services and Software unit had increased 12 percent year-over-year to $5.5 billion, including Quest Software. The company blamed “pricing adjustments” and “acquisition-related costs” for its earnings and gross margin spills.

Dell declined to provide any guidance for fiscal Q2 2014, citing—albeit not in so many words—the uncertainty surrounding the private equity battle royale going on between founder Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners against activist investors Carl Icahn and Southeastern for control of the company.

“We made progress in building our enterprise solutions capabilities in the first quarter and are confident in our strategy to be the leading provider of end-to-end scalable solutions,” said Brian Gladden, Dell chief financial officer. “In addition, we have taken actions to improve our competitive position in key areas of the business, especially in end-user computing, and it has affected profitability. We’ll also continue to make important investments to support our strategy and drive long-term profitability.”

As many dim and dark as bright spots dotted Dell’s mediocre financial performance for the period, but, in the company’s defense, its better numbers pointed away from the company’s PC heritage and towards its emerging solutions and services business model.

On the bright side:

On the dim side:

On the dark side:

Icahn redux

In the latest back-and-forth maneuvering on the Dell private equity buyout, Dell’s special committee this week asked Icahn for more details on his plan. Last week, Icahn and Southeastern offered $12 a share in cash to existing investors, a proposal in which shareholders would keep their stock. Icahn cautioned that if his offer went unheeded, he would recruit shareholders to vote down Silver Lake’s offer and stand up his own candidates for the board.

That was followed by a letter from Dell's special committee to Icahn, dated May 9 and posted on the vendor's web site: “It is not clear to us whether you intend to formulate your transaction as an actual acquisition proposal that the Board could evaluate and potentially endorse or accept or rather to propose it as an alternative that the Board could consider in the event the pending sale to Silver Lake and Michael Dell is not approved.”

Icahn was asked by the committee to provide additional information on his proposal, including “terms and structure of the transaction, the extent to which it would be conditioned upon future events and actions, and the remedies that would be available to the Company and its stockholders if the transaction is not consummated.” 

In addition, Icahn was asked to supply more information on his relationship with Southeastern, a list of who would make up the company's senior management team, more details on his strategy and operating plan and information on the terms of the debt financing required for his proposal.

Your move, Mr. Icahn.