Following on this previous post from about a month ago, Round Rock-based Dell, Inc. announced late last week that — as Jeff Matthews aptly notes — it had “puked the quarter.”
Dell’s announcement sent its shares sliding almost 10% for the day on Friday to the lowest close in about five years (Dell’s stock was down $2.19 to $19.91 a share, its lowest since October, 2001). This type of announcement is getting a tad monotonous for Dell, which missed forecasts for its fiscal first-quarter revenue and earnings earlier this year, and missed sales projections last year for its fiscal second and third quarters. Dell’s basic problem is that the computer market is shifting away from Dell’s core strength in providing computers to business toward consumer PC’s, which is a smaller part of Dell’s business. To make matters worse, Dell’s cost-structure is such that it doesn’t have any room left to undercut competitors on the cost of PC’s.
Meanwhile, Dell competitor Hewlett-Packard is taking advantage of the situation. HP has restructured its operations to focus on sales growth in consumer PC’s, where its wide footprint in retail stores across the US gives it an advantage over Dell’s focus on web-based and mail order sales. HP’s PC shipments in the U.S. jumped more than 15% in the second quarter.
Finally, Matthews is not convinced that the slide in Dell’s stock price is over, either:

[Dell] has used options extensively as a key component of its employee compensation. . . Dell spent more than $15 billion in the last four fiscal years buying back stockóyet fully diluted shares declined a mere 200 million shares over that time, thanks to the companyís willingness to dilute its shareholder base with large option grants. This is all perfectly legal, of course, but as options lose their place in the hearts and minds of investors, Dell may have to figure out a better way to keep costs down.