Also in the news…
In this week’s episode of “Dell Inc. (NASDAQ:DELL)’s of Our Lives,” Dell Inc. (NASDAQ:DELL)’s board of directors sent a 39-page rebuttal to the Carl Icahn camp noting that his proposed $12-per-share dividend offer would be about $3.9 billion short of funding. Previous to this rebuttal, Carl Icahn had stated that if Dell Inc. (NASDAQ:DELL)’s board didn’t go along with his partial buyout proposal, he and Southeastern Asset Management would seek to elect a new 12-person board of directors. Needless to say, this made-for-TV drama still has a long way to play out.
Xerox Corporation (NYSE:XRX) made waves yesterday when it announced the purchase of LearnSomething, a digital education company operating primarily in the pharmaceutical and health care industry, for an undisclosed sum. This is a continuation of Xerox Corporation (NYSE:XRX)’s deeper move into information technology with regard to the health care sector. Acquisitions like this set Xerox Corporation (NYSE:XRX) up for success by normalizing its cash flow against the natural ebb and flow of the economic cycle and allow it to pay out the robust 2.6% yield that shareholders are currently privy to.
Finally, office supply chain Staples, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPLS) declared a second-quarter cash dividend of $0.12 (matching its previous quarter) payable on July 18, 2013, to shareholders of record on June 28, 2013. Staples, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPLS), as I’ve noted over the past couple of months, looks like it’ll benefit domestically in a big way by picking up customers who get displaced by the ongoing Office Depot Inc (NYSE:ODP) and OfficeMax merger, which will result in store closures. Staples, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPLS) has all the tools to really surprise Wall Street analysts moving forward.
We can do better
Although the S&P 500 and this portfolio of deeply discounted value names both fell last week, this marked the fifth straight week that we managed to outperform the S&P 500. While we still have quite a ways to go to catch the S&P 500, which is still up about 7% from when we first began this experiment, I feel encouraged by this rebound and suspect investors will see the value in these 10 names over the long run.
Check back next week for the latest update on this portfolio and its 10 components.
The article One Person’s Trash Is Another Person’s Treasure Portfolio originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Sean Williams.
Fool contributor Sean Williams owns shares of QLogic, Dell, Skullcandy, and France Telecom, but has no material interest in any other companies mentioned in this article. You can follow him on CAPS under the screen name TMFUltraLong, track every pick he makes under the screen name TrackUltraLong, and check him out on Twitter, where he goes by the handle @TMFUltraLong. The Motley Fool owns shares of Apple, Dendreon, France Telecom, Skullcandy, and Staples, and recommends Apple, Exelon, and France Telecom.
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