Anyone have counterexamples where that turned out well for customers?
The justification sounds good, but they'd say something like that even if the plan was "squeeze money out of the company at the expense of users and customers and reputation."
If you bought in at any time between the IPO and May of this year, you'd be in for losses, so it's certainly not been an unprofitable move for them. But it's not the classical "foreign vulture PE comes in and destroys everything" situation here that people seem to be afraid of.
I can't speak of their server/enterprise business, however.
Honestly, it reminded me more of early-Amazon customer support, than anything more recent. E.g. support agent following up with a personalized email to me to make sure everything worked out okay with a warranty claim. Talking to humans was novel and pleasant.
That was on the consumer side though.
We also have a region where they have a 2 hour support SLA with part in hand. They will literally put your computer down to fix ours to avoid whatever punishment that gets meted out.
Back in the day a guy was collocated.
First year warranty is usually included in the product, so of course the replacement was free. I'd suggest renewing the warranties until EoL of your laptop as these service trips will likely become a bi-annual fixture.
Warranties don't usually cover damage on the part of the user/negligence.
> I'd suggest renewing the warranties until EoL of your laptop as these service trips will likely become a bi-annual fixture.
I've had it for about 2.5 years and haven't had any other issues (beyond Dell's idiotic choice to only support Modern Standby S-states).
It’s not the only ways PE companies make money sometimes they do actually allow companies to thrive on the long term by letting them escape the short term thinking that some stock traders demand but those tend to fly under the radar as well it’s not as newsworthy as some beloved brand turning to dust over a 5 year time span.
EQT the company in question here bought SuSE from Novell for a song listed it on the stock market in 2021 for a pretty decent profit and is now buying back stock at about half what they sold it for in 2021, so is itself kind of an counterexample to the narrative that PE firms always destroy what they buy.
Not private equity exactly, but he personally bought up 51% of the shares.
It's not like he improved their textile business. He took the name as a shell for his investment activities.
> Not private equity exactly, but he personally bought up 51% of the shares.
That's the opposite of the "without the pressure of public markets" situation though. He was doing quarterly reporting and answerable to shareholders (in some ways more answerable than a CEO who doesn't own the majority of shares - there are specific protections for minority shareholders).
I can't name a single example.