Carl Icahn Plans to Raise His Dell Buyout Price, and Add a Warrant

In a brief Bloomberg TV telephone interview, Carl Icahn just promised that he would be raising his bid for Dell’s common stock on Friday morning. Icahn claims that his offer will be a vastly superior offer than what Michael Dell and his board of directors has determined is the best price.

While the price was not formalized, it sounded like $14 plus a warrant that will come along with the stock in the new company. Today’s news comes on the heels of a letter sent by Mr. Icahn earlier today that was sent directly to Dell’s shareholders. His effort gives investors 60 days to decide which deal is better. Mr. Icahn urged shareholders not to vote for the Dell/Silver Lake merger terms.

Dell shares closed up only 2 cents at $13.35 and this stock ticked up another 8-cents to $13.42 in the after-hours session on Thursday. Dell’s 52-week trading range has been $8.69 to $14.64.

The following was added after 5:30 PM EST when an email was sent from Bloomberg’s media relations team:

Carl Icahn phoned into Bloomberg Television’s “Street Smart with Trish Regan and Adam Johnson” and said: “We are going to be coming up with a higher bid tomorrow morning. A little bump on my part. That is what I am looking for…. We will add to that bid. We will warrant to that. The bid will be superior, even to what is already superior…We think it is worth more than $14. We will do a warrant which is will be valuable. This is vastly superior to the Dell deal… We are going to come and add to the package which we think is superior already. We think that it will be around $20, buy the stock at 20 and we will give the shareholders a piece that warrant. We think that will make it utterly superior and we will go to the independent board. We will show them this and tell them that we think it is superior. This is our recommendation and we hope that it has traction.”

Icahn said on Michael Dell, “Look at him, he is going in and catching a falling knife. He knows the company better than anyone. He is paying for it. I don’t think anybody would accuse him of doing this for charity or helping shareholders…  Very often the founder of the company should not be running it later when it matures and I don’t think [Michael Dell] has done a good job and I think the board has been asleep on the switch. They should have held him accountable years ago. They have had a very poor performance. Instead of saying that you are out of here, they are going to reward him and give him this great bargain.”