UPDATED 07:00 EDT / APRIL 07 2016

NEWS

Dell presses EMC to sell off Documentum to reduce its debt burden

There’s no sign of the rumor mill letting up over at Dell Inc., which having sold its IT services business for $3 billion and listed its Quest and SonicWall units for sale, is now looking to dump EMC Corp.’s content management business formerly known as Documentum.

The latest rumor comes by way of Bloomberg, which quotes unnamed sources as saying Dell and EMC officials are already holding talks with prospective buyers for Documentum, which EMC bought for $1.7 billion in 2003. The sale is designed to help Dell reduce the amount of debt it needs to take on when it completes its $67 billion acquisition of EMC later this year.

Bloomberg made no mention of who is interested in buying Documentum, but one source said it’s likely to be a private equity company.

If and when Dell completes its takeover of EMC, it will gain a significant boost in a wide range of markets, including cloud, storage, security and virtualization. CEO Michael Dell said the EMC acquisition would help to Dell to accelerate its transformation into a complete IT services and solutions provider, which it desperately needs to do in order to replace the slowing revenues from its main PC and laptop business unit.

The acquisition is expected to close by October, according to the latest reports. Once it goes through, it’s said that Dell will take on as much as $50 billion in debt, and that’s why the company is looking to sell of as many “non-core assets” as it can, in order to reduce that burden. That’s why it sold its IT services unit to Japan’s NTT Data Corp. for around $3.05 billion, and why it’s also listed Quest and SonicWall for sale. Bloomberg said that Dell is currently talking to several prospective buyers about acquiring the two units for a combined $4 billion.

Since Dell went private in 2013 it’s been difficult to keep track of Dell’s finances. However, a recent Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing changed that, as Dell was forced to disclose its accounts since going private. Those accounts show that Dell’s revenues have been in decline, with its biggest cash cows – the PC, services and software businesses – seeing a six percent drop in net revenue.


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