It's the same PE firm which owned SUSE before, orchestrated the IPO, and now, still a majority shareholder, buys the minority shares back.

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.

Many could argue that Dell improved substantially after its 2013 transition to private ownership. At least, from the consumer perspective, things improved drastically. Linux support, a wider variety of competitive lines with much needed improvements to legacy lines, adoption of AMD for CPUs/GPUs, etc.

I can't speak of their server/enterprise business, however.

I think Dell went downhill after the acquisition, their hardware quality is junk all across their line: servers, workstations, laptops, monitors, etc. Every device from them that I had my hands on recently have, at best, terrible build quality, and at worst, multiple failures. And their support is a bad joke.

My experience was limited to laptops and monitors, but hardware's been good and service has been excellent.

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.

It’s all about the tier of support. At work we bought 20k laptops and screwed up the support spec. So we ended up with some garbage tier support that wouldn’t fix issues caused by Dell docks. You have to have “ProSupport”

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.

ProSupport is amazing, especially on Dell hardware on eBay which still has extended coverage remaining that can be transferred. Immediate phone connection to knowledgeable and helpful technicians.

International warranty transfer has been Dell's killer feature for me.

That's the complete opposite of my experience. I bought an XPS 15 (it supported Linux well) and broke the screen (my own fault) about 8mos into owning it. Spoke to support and they sent a technician over two days later. They replaced the screen, tested it and were on there way 40mins later, all for free.

I've had to replace the BIOS twice in the 3 years I've owned my Dell XPS 15 (2018 model). Both cases were spontaneous failures that completely disrupted my workloads and customer support told me it's something that "just happens". Service technicians came quickly but I'd rather not need them to come in the first place.

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.

> First year warranty is usually included in the product

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).

I dunno, looking at dell.com now all I see are bad CGI mockups of products and "AI" boldly slapped everywhere. It looks like trash and nothing like the Dell I used to use and own 20 years ago. I almost think the company is entirely fake and produces nothing based on their site today.

When Warren Buffet bought Berkshire Hathaway in 1962, he rapidly turned it from a failing textile company into a monster.

Not private equity exactly, but he personally bought up 51% of the shares.

> When Warren Buffet bought Berkshire Hathaway in 1962, he rapidly turned it from a failing textile company into a monster.

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).

Buffet bought Berkshire Hathaway entirely out of spite and has said that it was the worst investment he's ever made. The textile company continued to do poorly under his ownership, and shut down nearly 40 years ago.

The basic problem that gives private Equity firms a bad reputation is that winding down an fading company that have fundamentally stopped growing over a 3-5 year lifespan, is a pretty good way of getting a good return on investments so it happens a lot to downward sloping companies with enough of an nostalgia inducing brand to be newsworthy.

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.

I have no idea. However are their examples of companies that went public where it turned out well/better for customers?

I can't name a single example.