Dell’s 10-K Filing Delay Hampers a Turnaround

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Dell (DELL) announced the delay of its 10-K (Annual Report) for the year-ended FEB 2, 2007 beyond the April 3, 2007 date because the ongoing investigation has not been completed. DELL shares were halted after the close and resumed at 4:30 PM EST.

The Audit Committee’s investigation has identified a number of accounting errors, evidence of misconduct, and deficiencies in the financial control environment. The Audit Committee is working with management and the company’s independent auditors to determine whether the accounting errors necessitate any restatements of prior period financial statements, and to assess whether the control deficiencies constitute a material weakness in Dell’s internal control over financial reporting.

Some of this may have been thought of as "somewhat expected," but this isn’t a positive for those who have been banking on an imminent turnaround plan.  As management is busy trying to get its filings in, it has to be taking away from working toward the restructuring in whatever form is coming.  DELL closed up $0.04 today at $23.39, and its 52-week trading range is $18.95 to $30.60 (2-year high is $41.99).  DELL shares are going to be likely be all over the place in after-hours, but shares are currently down about 5.5% at $22.10 after resuming. 

Jon C. Ogg
March 29, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities of the companies he covers.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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