Trung Phan Profile picture
May 1, 2022 21 tweets 8 min read Read on X
In 2013, Dell Inc was a struggling PC and hardware firm. CEO Michael Dell took it private in a $25B buyout and turned it into an IT infrastructure + cloud giant (re-listing as Dell Technologies in 2018)

The $4B that Dell put up in the deal is now worth $40B.

Here's the story🧵 Image
We start in 1984, when @MichaelDell was a freshman pre-med student at University of Texas.

He was not a typical student: The 19yo launched a company called PC's Limited with $1k, selling computers (assembled from stock parts) from his dorm room. It was soon making $80k a month. Image
Apple's Macintosh was released in 1984. While Steve Jobs offered a pricy integrated PC, Dell provided a lower-priced options by:

◻️Going direct-to-consumer (order over phone)
◻️Offering made-to-order options which kept inventories low

Dell would drop out of school after 1 year. Image
In 1988, the company re-branded as Dell Computers and IPO'd at a market cap of $85m (for reference, Microsoft went public in 1986 @ $780m).

Dell was 23.

Dell Computers joined the Fortune 500 in 1992 and Dell -- at age 26 -- was the youngest CEO on the list (net worth = $300m+). Image
Boosted by online sales (which began in 1996), Dell Computers overtook Compaq to become the world's top PC seller in 2001.

Dell retired in 2004 but returned in 2007. In the following years, a host of devices (smartphone, laptops, Chromebook, tablets) took share from PCs. Image
From 2007 to 2012, Dell Inc. spent $14B on acquisitions to jumpstart its business amidst a saturated PC market (PC sales peaked in 2011).

Nothing worked: Dell Inc. stock lagged the NASDAQ for years.

Change was needed. And a plan came out of Michael Dell's family office (MSD). Image
MSD Capital takes its name from Dell's initials. The family office was formed in 1998 and managed his multi-billion dollar fortune including investments with PE firm Silver Lake.

In 2012, Silver Lake's Egon Durban pitched the idea of taking Dell private (to pivot the business).
In February 2013, Dell tried taking the company private at $24.4B (a 40% premium).

Investor Carl Icahn felt the offer was too low (pre-offer, Dell shares were trading 1/3rd of 5-yr highs) and fought the deal.

Dell finally won out in October 2013 w/ a $25B deal (he put up $4B): Image
Dell and Durban weren't done.

For years, Dell tried to acquire EMC, a giant data storage firm that owned an 81% stake in VMWare (a leader in cloud-computing and virtualization).

EMC was "in-play" for offers after Hewlett-Packard tried to acquire it. It was pricey, though: $65B.
Already coming off a huge leveraged-buyout, Dell had to find a way to finance the acquisition.

The solution: a tracking stock, which is a type of equity that "tracks" a division of a larger company.

To close the deal for EMC, Dell issued a tracking stock worth 53% of VMWare.
In a complicated transaction, Dell bought EMC (and its juicy VMWare stake) for $67B, the largest tech acquisition ever at the time.

The VMWare tracking stock saved Dell a $12B cash outlay. And Dell raised $50B in debt w/ VMWare as collateral. The deal closed in September 2016. Image
VMWare is a cash-printing machine. And after the deal, this was its ownership structure:

◻️53% in tracking stock (incl. Carl Icahn)
◻️28% for Dell/Silver Lake
◻️19% (stake not owned by EMC that was listed on NYSE)

In 2018, Dell made a move to buy out the VMWare tracking stock.
At first, Dell offered $9B from VMWare's balance sheet to buyout shareholders of the tracking stock at $0.60 on the dollar.

Icahn (again) fought back and the offer moved to $14B. To close the deal, Dell decided to bring the company public as Dell Technologies in December 2018.
At first, the re-listed Dell sold off. With a $50B+ debt pile, the market valued Dell <$0 based on its VMWare stake.

Dell said it would spin off the entire 81% VMWare stake and the market cheered it on. The deal closed last Fall.

The private turnaround has made Dell a fortune. Image
Before going private in 2013, Dell owned 16% of a PC maker. Now he owns:

◻️52% of Dell Technologies (a $100B revenue IT infrastructure business); stake = $19B
◻️43% of VMWare (a $12B revenue cloud business); stake = $21B

In 9yrs, Dell's investment has grown from $4B to $40B.
A key difference w/ Dell buying Dell Inc and Elon buying Twitter is debt: Dell Inc had the cash flow to support more of it.

Michael Dell personally put up 16% ($4B) of the $25B Dell deal. Elon may put up as much as 64% ($33.5B) of the $46.5B Twitter deal (huge skin in the game). Image
If you enjoyed that, I write business threads 1-2x a week.

Def follow @TrungTPhan to catch them in your feed.

Here's one you might like:
PS. Check out my Saturday newsletter too: trungtphan.com/subscribe/

(And here's a glorious Dell meme) Image
Had to write this thread after Michael tweeted this lol
Broadcom eyeing a $50B acquisition of VMWare, of which Michael Dell owns >40% … deal of the century only gets better Image

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More from @TrungTPhan

Feb 4
Norway discovered off-shore oil in 1969. It launched its sovereign wealth fund with $300m in 1996.

It’s since grown 6,000x to $1.8T or $327,000 per Norwegian (5.5m people).

The fund owns 1.5% of all global equities but, most impressively, had a UX designer put a real-time fund value tracker on its website landing page.
Norway’s SWF roughly is 65% equity, 25% bond, 10% real estate/infra (all global).

Unsurprisingly, its largest holding is Apple ($47B, or 1.4% of the entire company).

On a related note, here is my deep dive podcast on Steve Jobs and making of the iPhone: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/caf…
Norway spared no expense on its SWF website. Look at that carousel!
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Feb 4
never forget that episode of “Nathan For You” when he launched a fire detector product and tried to avoid import tariffs by turning it into a music device
One company that has been very good at navigating international food tariffs/regulations is Trader Joe’s. Built its dairy and wine businesses by finding workarounds.

I explain in this deep dive podcast on Trader Joe’s business history and strategy: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/caf…
Nathan’s “Blues” Smoke Detector Instrument lololol:

— “concert quality”
— “pre-tuned to F-sharp”
— “9 battery lets you jam for hours” Image
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Jan 29
wow, found a rare interview of a DeepSeek co-founder talking about his first AI startup exit a few years ago
Jian Yang is my 2nd fave Asian founder who created a food-related product.

The 1st is David Tran, who built Sriracha (great on hot dogs) into a $1B brand using $20k of gold bars he snuck out of Vietnam in milk cans.

I tell the full story in this podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/caf…
sold for $15m, what’s your excuse anon? Image
Read 4 tweets
Jan 17
Bookmarked a bunch of great David Lynch posts in past 24 hours (RIP to a legend):

1/ Martin Scorsese Tribute Image
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Sep 19, 2024
PayPal’s bland logo redesign was inevitable
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If you are the person that did the un-aligned letters for the previous eBay logo, please contact the research app team. We are huge fans of how un-aligned the “e” is with the “y”.Bearly.AI
This article offers up reasons for popularity of simple font logos (mostly Sans Serif):

— Easier to standardize ads across mediums
— Improves readability (especially on mobile)
— The “brand” matters more than the logo velvetshark.com/why-do-brands-…
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Sep 1, 2024
Berkshire Hathaway board member Chris Davis once asked Charlie Munger why Costco didn’t drop the membership card.

Let anyone shop and raise prices by 2% (still great value), thus making up for lost membership fees (and more).

Munger said the card is important filter:

▫️“Think about who you’re keeping out [with a membership card]. Think about the cohort that won’t give you their license and their ID and get their picture taken.

Or they aren’t organized enough to do it, or they can’t do the math to realize [the value]…that cohort will have a 100% of your shoplifters and a 100% of your thieves. Now, it’ll also have most of your small tickets.

And that cohort relative to the US population will probably be shrinking as a % of GDP relative to the people that can do the math [on Costco’s value].”▫️

I have a membership but have been guffing on the math for a few years tbh. They keep telling me to upgrade from Gold to Business but I’m too lazy (even if the 2-3% Cash Back on Business pays back after a few trips).

This is a long way of saying Costco’s membership price hike effective today — its first in 7 years — is annoying but when I decide to do the math in a few months, it’ll be worth it.

***

Chris Davis’ remarks from this episode of The Knowledge Project: open.spotify.com/episode/6fJYHF…Image
Anyway, here is something I wrote about Costco’s $9B+ clothing business my affinity for Kirkland-branded socks and Puma gym shirts. readtrung.com/p/costcos-9b-c…
Two notes:

▫️Meant “Executive” (not “Business”) membership
▫️Chris Davis was doing a pure thought experiment. Costco membership obvi high margin (on~$5B a year) and accounts for majority of Costco profits. Retail margin is tiny on ~$230B of annual sales (Costco would need like another $150B+ from letting anyone shop to make up membership profits)Image
Image
Read 5 tweets

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