Dell's Forecast For 2014 Has Dropped Nearly $10 Billion (DELL)

As part of a proposed transaction to take the company private, Dell has issued a 274-page proxy statement outlining how it came to this pass.

There's lots of legalese and background information on all the meetings Dell had with prospective investors. But the real takeaway are in Dell's shrinking forecast, as it tries to recast itself from a PC maker to a provider of enterprise hardware and services.

Last July, Dell's management team, including Michael Dell, the company's CEO and founder, prepared a forecast which had the company doing $66 billion in revenues in the current fiscal year, which ends in January 2014.

In September, Dell's management team cut the forecast to $59 billion. Then, in November, the company hired BCG. The next month, BCG presented a new forecast: $56 billion. BCG also projected that revenues would decrease for the next few years.

There are now three parties trying to take Dell private—a group backed by Silver Lake Partners and Michael Dell; Blackstone; and activist investor Carl Icahn.

Hence the importance of the forecast: The more dismal Dell's growth prospects, the less investors will have to pay to take it private.

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