Give Michael Dell this much: He backs up his pledges with hard cash.
Last week, Dell, the chairman of Dell Inc., bought about $100 million worth of his company’s stock, the second time in less than three months he has purchased such a huge stake, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
In late June and early July, Dell had also acquired about $100 million worth of company stock, according to the SEC.
The billionaire now owns more than 225 million Dell shares directly and another 3 million shares in a gift trust. His wife, Susan Dell, controls more than 26 million shares, according to Monday’s filing. Together, the Dells’ holdings account for nearly 13 percent of the company’s stock.
Before the purchase was announced, shares of the world’s second-largest maker of personal computers had lost 24 cents, closing at $20.17 on Monday. They are trading near a 52-week low, falling 20 percent since Aug. 28 when the company reported second-quarter earnings that fell short of Wall Street expectations, according to the Associated Press.
The shares have ranged between $18.13 and $30.77 in the past 12 months. They rose 28 cents, to $20.45, in late trading after news of the filing.
Dell, who founded the company in his University of Texas dorm room in 1984 with just $1,000 and an idea to provide affordable personal computers to college students, had been the world’s largest PC maker through his strategy of selling directly to customers.
But the company was surpassed in 2006 by Hewlett-Packard Co., after that company drove down prices, in part by using contract production.
Now Dell is attempting a comeback, and many saw its founder’s investment as a symbol of his confidence in new strategies, h including the release of a new miniature notebook computer, and plans to shave costs by selling some of the company’s factories, first disclosed by the Wall Street Journal.
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