Dell votes to buy back VMware tracking stock and go public again, to trade on NYSE beginning December 28 under the symbol DELL
Dell just announced that it has agreed to buy back the VMware tracking stock from the EMC acquisition. The company confirmed the buy-back price of $120 per share for a total of $23.9 billion.
Context & Ripple Effects
This closes a three-year loop that started with Dell's $50B+ EMC takeover, which paid EMC holders partly in tracking stock tied to Dell's stake in VMware. Earlier this year, Dell weighed a messier exit: a reverse merger into VMware, which would have made Dell public without a formal IPO.
That option was shelved in favor of the cleaner route announced in July — a cash-and-share swap to subsume the DVMT tracking stock — and today's shareholder vote locks it in at $120 per share, $23.9 billion total, clearing Dell to list on the NYSE on December 28.
First-order effects
- DVMT holders receive $120 per share in cash and stock, and Dell begins trading on the NYSE under DELL on December 28 — ending its five-year run as a private company post-EMC.
- VMware stays an operating subsidiary roughly 80%-owned by Dell rather than becoming the public shell, so the reverse-merger structure is formally dead.
Second-order effects
- The buyback's final price tag of $23.9 billion is up from the $21.7 billion valuation when the swap was proposed in July — the premium Dell paid to settle disgruntled tracking-stock holders who argued the DVMT undervalued VMware.
- Michael Dell and his backers regain publicly traded equity they can use as acquisition currency and for eventual exits, while VMware's minority shareholders face a parent whose leverage from the EMC deal still hangs over both stocks.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, mega-LBOs come back to market not through IPOs or reverse mergers but by unwinding tracking-stock structures — making tracking equity a standard bridge instrument for take-private deals that need a public return path.
- NYSE gains a marquee relisting that validates the exchange-listing route over SPAC-style alternatives for large private companies, pressuring rivals like Nasdaq on future mega-listing mandates.
The trend: Large take-private deals are increasingly returning to public markets by buying back their own tracking stock rather than pursuing IPOs or reverse mergers, with Dell's EMC unwind as the template case.