Dell Inc. is nearing a deal that would once again make the PC and data-storage giant a public company, according to people familiar with the matter.
Dell plans to announce as early as Monday that it intends to acquire via a share swap the DVMT tracking stock, which tracks its fast-growing VMware Inc. virtualization-software unit, the people said.
Terms of the agreement, which could still fall through, couldn’t be learned, but Dell plans to acquire the DVMT shares at a premium and DVMT shareholders are also expected to receive several billion dollars in cash as part of the deal. Dell Technologies Inc., the tracking stock’s formal name, has a market capitalization of nearly $17 billion, while VMware’s VMW, +0.58% is nearly $60 billion, after the shares rose this year on the possibility of a deal.
The move would culminate a strategic review Dell has been conducting for months. Other options it considered include a combination with VMware itself or a straight initial public offering, the company has said. The tracking stock was created as a way to help finance Dell’s purchase of storage pioneer EMC in 2016. The deal was largely in cash, but the remainder was paid via the new security that was linked to a portion of EMC’s interest in the VMware business, which provides cloud-infrastructure services.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
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