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

Sep 19
PayPal’s bland logo redesign was inevitable
Image
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-…
Read 4 tweets
Sep 1
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
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Read 5 tweets
Aug 15
One of the Team USA rowers who won a Gold Medal is an investment banker and actually did the “B2B SaaS Sales” joke on Linkedin. Legend. Image
Here’s the rest of the post (perfectly formatted to show up in the feed as a shitpost): linkedin.com/feed/update/ur…
Image
Justin if you’re reading this and are available for consulting, the research app team would love to engage your B2B SaaS knowledge for our Q4 sales roadmapBearly.AI
Read 4 tweets
Aug 7
Explainer video on science of why the 400m sprint is considered the most painful track & field event.

And why “no person on the planet can run the 400m all out from start to finish".

The race pushes the way the body creates energy to the limit:

▫️0-50 meters: ATP-CP (energy system for very short and explosive movements; used up after 5-10 seconds)

▫️50-200 meters: Anaerobic glycolysis (burns glucose without oxygen, leading to lactic acid buildup and muscle fatigue)

▫️200-300 meters: Aerobic energy (uses oxygen to break down glucose, but cannot keep up with the demand)

▫️300-400 meters: Anaerobic energy reserves tapped while aerobic energy is too slow to fill the gaps (lactic acid buildup is going HAM)

Track athletes can pace for longer distances and shorter ones are just over quicker (obvs).

The Olympic record is a blazing 43:03, set by South African runner Wayde van Niekerk in 2016 (and 2024 Final race is tomorrow).

***

Full video from Outperform:
Usain Bolt ran the 400m early in career but then said training was “too hard”.

The 400m Hurdles is a world of pain too for similar reasons — Vox has a good vid on it:

Here is a great breakdown of Wayde van Niekerk’s record run:

Image
The 400m is also tough because you don’t get the benefit of an absolute baller like Bottle Klaus keeping hydrated
Read 5 tweets
Jul 20
The amount of work Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli team put into a film is mind-boggling.

Each typically has 60k-70k frames, all hand-drawn and painted with water color.

This 4-second clip (“The Wind Rises”) took one animator 15 months to do. Insane.
The docu “10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki” shows him talking to the animator (Eiji Yamamori) after its done.

It’s so good:

Miyazaki: “Good job.”
Yamamori: “It’s so short, though”
Miyazaki: “But it was worth it.”

The animator gets a second of joy (he’s pumped) but on to the next.
Miyazaki doesn’t use digital FX or computer graphics. He believes “that the tool of an animator is the pencil.”

On a related note, here’s something I wrote about another Japanese legend dedicated to the craft (Ichiro Suzuki) and the art of mastery: readtrung.com/p/jerry-seinfe…
Read 4 tweets
Jul 9
New York City paid Mckinsey $4m to conduct a feasibility study on whether trash bins are better than leaving garbage on the street.

The deck is 95-slides long and titled “The Future of Trash”.

Some highlights:

▫️The official term is “containerization”, which is the “storage of waste in sealed, rodent-proof receptacles rather than in plastic bags placed directly on the curb.”

▫️Two main types of containerization: 1) individual bins for low density locales; 2) shared containers for high-density.

▫️NYC needs to clean up 24,000,000lbs of garbage a day

▫️Containerization has only become the norm worldwide in major cities in the past 15 years.

▫️New York City first considered containerization in the 1970s but never conducted a feasibility study until now (Mckinsey’s sales team has been dropping the ball)

▫️Key considerations for container viability:

• POPULATION DENSITY: NYC has 30k residents per square mile (more dense than comparable big cities)

• BUILT ENVIRONMENT: Few places to “hide” containers due to history of infrastructure development.

• WEATHER: Snow creates challenges for “mechanized collection” in the winter.

• CURB SPACE: Mostly taken up by bus stops, bike lanes, outdoor dining and fire hydrants.

• COLLECTION FREQUENCY: NYC needs to double frequency of pick-up for estimated speed of trash that bins would accumulate.

• FLEET: A new garbage truck will needs to be designed to collect rolling bins at scale.

▫️ The proposed solution (literally garbage bins and shared containers) covers 89% of NYC streets and 77% of residential tonnage.

▫️The three case studies — because you gotta have solid case studies — are Amsterdam, Paris and Barcelona.

▫️There is a slide called “Why containerization matters” and three reasons are “rats”, “pedestrian obstruction” and “dirty streets” (the 21-year intern that did this slide billed at prob $10k an hour is my hero).

The study is actually pretty interesting.

I have no idea if $4m is a rip-off to learn that “yeah, we should put garbage in bins so rats don’t eat it” but I would have happily done it for 10-20% of that budget (and come to a similar conclusion).Image
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It is actually an interesting deck. Just the thought of a 20-year old newly grad getting billed at an obscene rate to say”rats get to garbage” is kinda funny

Four more solid slides:
— By the numbers (daily garbage = 140 Statue of Liberty a day!!)
— City comparison
— Container comparison (looks like they did select the “scalable” trash bin)
— Curb side analysis

Full deck here: dsny.cityofnewyork.us/wp-content/upl…Image
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Think Mckinsey telling NY to “put garbage in bins so rats don’t eat it and people can walk” will work out better than when it told AT&T in 1981 that cellphones would be “niche.”

That cost AT&T $13B and one worst business predictions ever as I wrote here: readtrung.com/p/the-worst-te…
Read 6 tweets

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