Michael Dell
increased his holding of School Specialty Inc. (
SCHS
) by 53% last week at an average price of $2.82 per share,
according to
GuruFocus Real Time Picks
. Dell, founder and CEO of DELL Inc. (
DELL
), the computer company, owns 2,884,499 shares after the
purchase.
School Specialty Inc. (
SCHS
) is a producer and supplier of products for the educational
market. In the last year, the company's stock price dropped 78.4%
as earnings shriveled. School Specialty posted net losses in the
last two quarters. It also saw three quarters of revenue declines
from the July to January quarters, though revenue increased from
$85.3 million in the January quarter to $119 million in the April
quarter.
The company had been suffering from a weak economy in the
education sector. In its fiscal 2012 third quarter, School
Specialty's president and CEO Michael P. Lavelle attributed weak
results to "postponed state adoptions and uncertainty in the
marketplace related to school budgets and changes in core
standards."
Lavelle echoed similar impacts to earnings in the fourth
quarter's results: "ongoing delays in curriculum purchase as
school districts held off buying related to common core standards
and pending assessments."
At the start of the upcoming fiscal year, the company expects an
uneven recovery to begin as state and local budgets stabilize and
grow, and has completed a debt refinancing of $270 million to
position itself to take advantage of potential growth initiatives
to turn business around.
Dell has owned shares of School Specialty, his smallest holding,
since before 2007. Dell's largesting holdings are DineEquity (
DIN
), Wright Express Corp. (
WXS
) and Macquarie Infrastructure Company LLC (
MIC
).
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