In Tuesday morning’s WSJ, ace technology reporter Dan Gallagher wrote an article on Dell (DELL) that caught my attention (“Dell Might Be Tech’s Cheap Dark Horse” May 24). What struck my fancy was that DELL was trading at less than 6x forward earnings according to Gallagher. With my belief that conditions were in play for a relief rally I was looking to pick up stocks to play a potential move higher and DELL struck me as a perfect vehicle – especially given the catalyst of earnings Thursday afternoon.

Happily DELL did not disappoint. Revenue of $26.1 billion was +16% from a year ago and and handily beat analyst’s estimates as did EPS of $1.84 (+36%). I was also ecstatic to see that DELL used the recent selloff in its shares to buy back $1779 million worth of them, reducing its diluted share count by almost 4% to 780 million from 810 million. DELL also recently initiated a 33 cent quarterly dividend which works out to almost 3% annually. Even with DELL shares currently +5% in the after hours to $46 it represents tremendous value.