Dell’s 49B reasons to consider going public

SEATTLE/NEW YORK • When Michael Dell led a group taking his company private four years ago, he extolled the virtues of shading the company from the scrutiny of the public markets. Now he’s considering taking the computer maker public again. What’s changed? The costs associated with carrying the billions of dollars of debt the company took on when it went private and later bought EMC Corp.

Dell Technologies Inc.’s 2016 acquisition of EMC nearly tripled t he company’s debt load at the time. All told, Dell had around US$48.5 billion of bonds and loans as of Nov. 3. Before it went private in 2013, it had less than US$ 7 billion of debt, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Now changes to U. S. corporate tax law could make it more expensive for some corporations to borrow, including Dell, and boost other expenses. That’s painful for a company that’s already losing money. Taking steps such as going public again would help t he company raise equity and pay down debt. Dell spokesman Dave Farmer declined to comment.

“Tax reform threw them a curveball,” said Jordan Chalfin, an analyst at CreditSights. “It put a wrench in their deleveraging plans.”

Under the new law, Dell can only deduct interest expenses equal to about 30 per cent of a measure of its income. Losing part of that deduction could possibly end up costing it somewhere in the region of US$100 million a year, Chalfin said. In late November, Dell was among companies that signed on to a letter to Senate leaders opposing a stricter version of the deduction limitation than what ultimately become law.

Tax law changes could hit the company in another way: Dell has to pay taxes on cash and other assets held overseas, which could amount to around US$ 6 billion over time, starting with about US$ 480 million for each of the first five years, according to estimates from CreditSights analysts led by Chalfin.

Dell said on an analyst call last month that it will not comment on the impacts of the new tax law but that it expects them to be manageable. Dell has about US$3 billion of bonds maturing this year, and another US$ 4.35 billion in 2019, not to mention the more than US$2 billion of loans coming due over that period, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Rising interest rates may weigh on its interest expenses, too. Around US$ 12.9 billion of the company’s loans as of Nov. 3 were tied to the floating rate known as the London interbank offered rate, or Libor. That rate has gone up 92 basis points since the EMC deal closed, effectively adding more than US$ 115 million to Dell’s annual interest expense, if the company did not hedge that risk. The company has been mitigating that extra expense by negotiating lower rates on some of its loans.