Dell mulls divestitures as sales slide

New S-4 filing also shows Dell expects 'divestitures of non-core businesses'

Dell has revealed its revenues are declining and that it intends to dispose of some of its assets in a newly released S-4 filing.

In the document it showed for the year ending 29 January 2016, Dell's revenues were down six per cent at $54.9bn (£38.7m). It made a net loss of $1.1bn, up nine per cent from the previous year.

Dell also said it was becoming tougher to make money from the PC market.

"Other challenges include declining margins as demand for PC products shifts from higher-margin premium products to lower-cost and lower-margin products, particularly in emerging markets, [as well as] significant and increasing competition from efficient and low-cost manufacturers and from manufacturers of innovative and higher-margin PC products," the filing said.

It noted that Dell "also lacks a strong offering in tablets", and said that the cloud could challenge the vendor's market position.

"There also may be increased competition from new types of products as the options for mobile and cloud computing solutions increase," the form said.

A number of reports have emerged recently about Dell disposing of certain assets, including Quest and SonicWall, in order to pay off its debt from the EMC deal.

In the S-4 filing, it said that Denali (Dell's parent company) has around $14bn in long-term debt and that it "may not be able to achieve its objective of reducing its indebtedness in the first 18 to 24 months after the completion of the merger".

"The cash necessary to achieve that objective is expected to come from divestitures of non-core businesses of the DHI Group (Denali holdings Inc), including EMC," the document said.