EMC Reports Q4 as Anxiety Rises About Dell Buyout

Shareholders of the data storage company #EMC will get an update on the company’s plans to sell itself to privately held #Dell on Wednesday morning when it reports the results of its fiscal fourth quarter.

If nothing else, EMC’s report will remind its shareholders how they lucked out last fall when Dell offered to acquire the company in a deal worth$67 billion. As of Friday’s close, EMC was worth about $20 billion less than that. Since then, the shares of both EMC and its software subsidiary VMware have fallen: EMC by 13 percent and VMware by more than 38 percent.

That fact, coupled with intensifying anxieties about the state of the corporate debt markets, has triggered some concerns that Dell’s takeover plan, which hinges on raising more than $40 billion in debt, might run into trouble.

With the promise of $24.05 a share in cash plus new tracking shares linked to VMware, there’s no reason to expect that EMC shareholders will vote down the deal, even though someshareholders have hinted they might do just that. Even so, EMC shares traded below $24 a share on two consecutive days last week.

http://recode.net/2016/01/25/emc-reports-q4-as-anxiety-rises-about-dell-buyout/