Icahns

The #PlayNiceButWin hashtag is a reference to the title of Dell’s 2021 autobiography titled, “Play Nice But Win: A CEO’s Journey from Founder to Leader.” In the book, Dell skewered Icahn as a stooped and shuffling old man focused purely on making life difficult for the companies he was targeting but with few ideas on how to run them.

Dell’s tweet, which showed Icahn Enterprises’ stock down -80.7% in the last 10 years while the stock market soared, was liked by Nathan Anderson, the activist short seller who runs Hindenburg Research. Earlier this year, Anderson targeted Icahn Enterprises, saying both Icahn and his publicly traded investment vehicle were overleveraged in the face of years of trading losses. Anderson has bet against Icahn Enterprises and the campaign has caused its stock to plunge by more than 60% in 2023.

For his part, Icahn has said Anderson’s Hindenburg has launched a disinformation campaign that distorts the financial situation at Icahn Enterprises
IEP,
+0.98%
in an effort to make money from the falling stock. A representative for Icahn didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Dell is not part of the Hindenburg effort, but the bad blood between Dell and Icahn dates back over a decade, when Icahn tried to deep six Dell’s $25 billion effort to take his namesake computer company private back in 2013. 

After announcing the company’s intention, Icahn acquired a sizable stake in the firm in an effort to scotch the deal, saying the proposed buyout offer was too low and amounted to a move by Dell to steal the company from shareholders on the cheap. 

Icahn then teamed up with another shareholder to make a counter offer, prompting Dell and his partners to have to raise their price. Dell was ultimately successful in taking the company private, but at a significantly higher price. After losing the fight, Icahn called Dell a dictator.

Dell responded by calling Icahn “ a bad guy.”

“He lies. He has no ethical boundaries. He will say anything, do anything. I have no time for him,” Dell said at a conference the following year.

The contretemps flared up again in 2018, when Dell made a move to buy out investors in DVMT, a holding company that tracked his ownership stake in publicly traded software company VMware
VMW,
+0.41%,
in an effort to take Dell back into the public markets.

Icahn swooped in and acquired an 8.3% stake in DVMT in an attempt to scuttle the deal, saying Dell and his partners at private equity firm Silver Lake were trying to steal the company.

“You’ve got two guys that are going to make $11 billion,” he said on CNBC in 2018. “Eleven billion dollars for doing nothing. It’s unrivaled even on Wall Street’s standards.”

In a shareholder letter, Icahn declared war. 

“I intend to do everything in my power to STOP this proposed DVMT merger,” the letter said. “In my opinion, it is better to have peace than war. I still enjoy a good fight for the right reasons, and in the current situation, I do not see peace arriving quickly!” he wrote.

Ultimately, Dell prevailed but was forced to pay a $1 billion settlement to DVMT shareholders who had sued arguing they were short changed. Dell later spun off VMWare and an agreement was reached last year to sell it to Broadcom for $61 billion. 

Dell’s recent swipe at Icahn Enterprises was directionally correct, but not completely accurate because it did not include dividends. According to FactSet, Icahn Enterprises has returned -46.6% over the last 10 years, compared to a 201.9% return for the S&P 500
SPX.

Meantime, the stock of Dell Technologies
DELL,
-1.29%
is up more than 500% since Dell took the company public again in 2018, giving the company a market capitalization of some $53 billion and suggesting Icahn might have had a point a decade ago that Dell was taking the company private on the cheap. Dell has long argued that he could not have initiated the big changes required to make the company successful as a public company.