Dell Feels the Heat
At the company's annual meeting, shareholders vented about the lack of dividends, while management cited its success in customer service
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They sure fit my definition of gluttons for punishment. Some 100 Dell (DELL) shareholders trudged through the sweltering Texas heat on July 21 to sit through the company's annual meeting, which started promptly at 8 a.m. in the Austin Convention Center.
They couldn't be happy that their stock was worth about half what it was a year ago. And the afternoon before the meeting, management had dropped the bombshell that second-quarter revenue would come in a couple of hundred million bucks light and that earnings would fall short by about 30%. During the course of the compressed one-hour meeting, Dell's stock dropped 10% and was selling at $19 per share, a price it first attained in 1998.