[adventureful]

It's not that Dell would have an incentive to go private, it's that it would have no choice with Michael Dell bearing down on it, as the CEO and chairman of the board and owning 12% with overwhelming capital at his disposal. A 50% premium offer on the stock would probably more than hook institutional investors to bail out.

Michael Dell would buy it because it's crazy cheap (remove the cash discounted for 'real' liabilities and it has a 3.x pe ratio), and has a very long, very successful track record of profitability. If I'm not mistaken, it's basically had only a couple of quarters of unprofitable operation in the last 19 years (there was one in 1993).

He could plausibly earn back his $15 billion in cash in five or six years and own the entire company outright thereafter, with a potentially very good upside if they successfully transition to a services company. He's also young enough at 47, to still operate it for at least another 15 plus years with no big deal.

It's understood this is a very very very very unlikely scenario. Nobody likes to put $16 billion at such risk.