How much of Dell's business is low margin PC manufacturing today? Their stated intention is to continue moving heavily toward an IBM style services model rather than remain so dependent on computers. I'd place my bet on Dell being worth a lot more than $20 billion in the future, or a lot less. They can afford to fund their way into a very large services business and the PC biz should continue to supply cash for a while.

Michael Dell is worth $16 billion on his own. In talking about him taking it private, I was assuming he'd lean into it extremely heavily (putting most of his net worth at risk). And obviously he very well might have no desire to do such a thing at nearly 50 years of age.

Even if Michael Dell used $10b of his wealth, financed $10b of it with Dell's cash, and then got $10b in private equity, it would be extremely doable at a $30b take out price (or less given the very bearish sentiment on the stock).

If Michael Dell wanted to, I think he could take the whole thing out himself (leveraging the company cash ultimately as well). He currently owns around 12% of the company ($13.5x billion in wealth outside of Dell stock). In the current market weakness, he could probably gradually consume another 8% to 13% of the stock without hardly moving the price.