With the announcement that Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) chairman and founder Howard Schultz is re-assuming the role of chief executive officer, it gets real interesting. Why?

Founders know the vision and the dream better than anyone; after all, it was their idea. The landscape is littered with founders returning to the CEO role. Larry Ellison has done so with Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL), Michael Dell has come back to Dell (NASDAQ: DELL), and perhaps the most successful, Steve Jobs of Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). The founder of an enterprise typically has the passion and the vision to where the enterprise should be. The problem with founders is that they normally are not great managers.

Steve Jobs of Apple had to actually get fired from Apple, found Pixar, develop it and eventually sell it to Disney (NYSE: DIS) before he learned the necessary lessons to bring Apple back. His record of accomplishment will be the subject of MBA course studies, and maybe even psychology books!

With Dell, the jury is out, both on him and the company. I don't like Dell, the company, and could not understand Wall Street's enthusiasm in 2007. Dell's business is characterized by depressing margins -- never a good sign -- and Hewlett Packard (NYSE: HPQ) controlling both margins and the market share. Dell may never come back, at least not the way it is structured now.

Ellison at Oracle has acquired growth through depressed, but smart acquisitions, to build the applications business around its core database business.

And Howard Schultz at Starbucks?

When Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) reported earnings just recently, the world's second largest computer maker showed above-average revenue but profits lagged expectations due to higher costs in the quarter. Meanwhile competitor Hewlett-Packard Corp. (NYSE: HPQ) reported a stellar quarter on everything from revenue to profit to future guidance. It seems as though Dell and HP have completely traded places from where they stood in 2004, no?

Dell brings up the issue of bigger-than-expected costs being a problem in the third quarter as it tries to explain why its profits sunk. Inquiring investors want to know why component prices were a problem for Dell in the back half of 2007 when HP saw lower component costs in the same period?

Your guess is as good as mine, but the questions won't stop there. For a company that built a reputation around being lean all the way around, what happened to Dell's cost structure recently? That has not been answered directly -- yet.

Shares of Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) fell in after-hours trading after the computer maker reported third-quarter earnings that didn't impress Wall Street.

Net income rose 27% to $766 million, or 34 cents, on and sales rose 8.5% to $15.6`5 billion. Excluding one-time items, profit was 35 cents meeting analysts' forecasts. The revenue figure beat analysts' forecasts of $15.36 billion.

Investors appear to be reacting to the 6% decline in Dell's U..S. consumer business which underscores the challenge the Round Rock. Texas-based company faces in recapturing the top spot in the PC market from Hewlett-Packard.Corp. (NASDAQ: HPQ). Analysts also may have expected better margin performance.

Moreover, the outlook was also a bit downbeat in the earnings release.

"The company continues to focus on strategic priorities that will provide better value to customers while driving a more optimal balance of liquidity, profitability and growth," the company said. "As the company executes against these priorities it will continue to incur costs as it restructures to improve productivity and execution, reduce headcount where appropriate, and invest in infrastructure and acquisitions. These actions, which the company believes are necessary to drive long-term sustainable value, may adversely impact the company's performance."

Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) rolled out its Q3 numbers after the bell this afternoon, and they were in-line with expectations. The analyst crowd had pegged Dell with a $0.35 EPS for the Q3 period, and the company saw an actual of $0.34 for the quarter, missing consensus estimates by a penny. Will the market punish it after hours? So far, yes -- Dell shares are down to $26.29 in after-hours trading after completing the trading day at $28.14.

Dell's Q3 revenues were $15.6 billion, up 9% from the year-ago quarter, with operating income at $829 million (up 13% year over year). In addition, the world's second-largest computer maker saw $1 billion in cash from its operations, along with growing its business in the Americas 7%. By contrast, Dell's international operations grew much larger than that: EMEA business grew 14% while the Asia Pacific region saw 18% growth gains.

Dell has spent $103 million YTD on acquisitions, which include Silverback, Zing, ASAP, EqualLogic and Everdream. Dell, in other words, is trying to make up for lost ground using a string of smaller acquisitions. This was not the company's strategy about 24 months ago, but times have changed. If you'd like to see all the details currently being presented in the Q3 conference call, visit this link (PDF download).

Reuters makes the argument that strong numbers from HP (NYSE: HPQ) will cause the market to expect more from Dell (NASDAQ: DELL). The news service says HP "results may raise the bar for competitor Dell, which is more vulnerable to U.S. economic woes and reports earnings next week." Dell does get 85% of its sales from the U.S. market.

Wall Street is not so stupid that it has missed the vulnerability in the Dell model. HP's shares are up more than 20% so far this year. Dell's are only up 5%.

Dell only needs to report very modest numbers to please investors. Its new program to sell to consumers through retail outlets is only a year old and its push into key markets like China is in the early stages.

The question investors will have for Dell management is: what does 2008 look like? If the PC company cannot begin to pick up shares from HP, Lenovo, and Acer by then, the turnaround is no turnaround. It will have turned out to be a nice try.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Hewlett-Packard (NASDAQ: HPQ) today reported quarterly earnings that beat Wall Street analysts' forecasts for the 11th straight quarter. The company also gave earnings guidance that exceeded analysts' estimates and announced an $8 billion stock buyback.

Net income soared 28% to $2.16 billion, or 81 cents a share, from $1.7 billion, or 60 cents, a year earlier. Excluding one-time items, profit was 86 cents. Revenue jumped 15% to $28.3 billion. The largest computer maker was expected to earn 82 cents on revenue of $21.39 billion. Shares of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company rose in after-hours trading.

In the current quarter, Hewlett-Packard expects profit of 80 cents on sales of $27.4 billion to $27.5 billion, exceeding analysts' estimates of 77-cent profit and revenue of $26.99 billion.

This underscores the challenge Michael Dell faces in turning around Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL). Hewlett-Packard has been kicking their butts ever since Mark Hurd took over as chief executive.

I can picture Sandy Weill, the former chairman of Citigroup (NYSE: C), now. He's probably pacing the floor of his penthouse apartment, wringing his hands, sweating, perhaps yelling into the phone at someone when he gets a chance. He must be all in a lather about Citigroup's drop in share price (down another 5% so far today to $35.91).

I co-wrote a book about Sandy Weill that came out in 2002 and one thing Mike Brewster and I posited is that Weill would like to run Citigroup until he met his maker. That wasn't in the cards, since he had to step down in 2003 after a series of scandals rocked the bank. And calling Weill the King of Capital, as we did in our book (King of Capital: Sandy Weill and the Making of Citigroup), didn't look so smart not too long after publication either.

Now I've been watching Maria Bartiromo on CNBC reporting that Weill does not want to run Citigroup, but will be happy to help out in the search for a new chief executive. Here's my interpretation: Of course he'd love to jump in and run the company again. He just knows the board could never give him the chance.

Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) has filed all of its past due quarterly financial statements with the SEC. That means that the Nasdaq no longer has a reason to delist that company. It also means that the PC company can begin its huge share buyback program again.

Dell sent in the filings after an investigation "found that senior executives and other employees manipulated the company's financial statements to give the appearance of hitting quarterly performance goals," according to The Wall Street Journal [subscription required]. The adjustment to net income for the four years was a modest $92 million.

In 2005, Dell's board had set up a plan to buy back as much as $10 billion worth of shares. But the investigation of accounting problems covered fiscal years 2003 through 2006, and the program was suspended.

With a market cap of $66 billion, buying $10 billion in shares could give earnings per share a very big lift.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

As the seasons roll around so do the quarterly PC sales numbers from research firm Gartner. It will be a chilly fall for Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) In the third quarter, the Texas-based PC company shipped 9.8 million PCs. That was an increase of less than 4% over the same period last year, and gave the company 14% of the global market, according to The Wall Street Journal.

By way of contrast, Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) shipped 12.8 million PCs world-wide, enough for 19% of the market and a 33% increase from the year earlier period.

Ouch.

It would appear that HP is going to report especially strong PC sales when it releases its third quarter earnings. Its shares are already at almost $53, near their 52-week high.

But the numbers raise serious questions about Michael Dell's chances of turning around the company that he founded. He has put his PC into retail outlets, which should help sales over time. But he is still competing with smaller companies like Acer and Lenovo, who are anxious to increase sales in Europe and the US.

Dell's shares are up almost 15% over the last six months. But if the Q3 sales numbers are reflected in its earnings, the improvement could be short lived.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7 Wall St.

Although Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) has slowly risen from the depths in 2007, the company still has a long way to go in order to regain former growth rates and again challenge competitor Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) for the world's largest computer maker crown.

Last week at a ZDNet forum, company CEO and founder Michael Dell said that the company he now leads again has seen an increase in server sales powered by the Linux operating system. Linux is a freely available software operating system that runs more web servers globally than any other platform, although Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) likes to ignore that fact as it trumpets its own Windows Server products. Both operating systems are fine products that are battle tested -- though one is free and the other is not.

But does that mean Dell is set for a triumphant return as 2008 approaches? Some don't think so, since it seems likely that Dell's server products will experience a sales decline in the coming six months. Dell resellers may also be planning to stock less of the company's server products in that same time frame as well.

I've been keeping a keen eye on Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) for quite a while, and the recent admission from the company about its internal financial accounting problems was long, long overdue. All things considered, the $150 million revenue restatement that spanned almost five years was a pittance compared to much larger accounting scandals the world has seen from other public companies. But that news overshadowed Dell's larger problem that is still in flux -- how to re-ignite growth.

It's true that the company surprised the market with a quarterly profit that was higher than expected and this was a good thing for the company. Did Dell all of a sudden have a great sales quarter? Not really, as much of that profit came from cost cutting under returning CEO Michael Dell along with server sales in the corporate sector -- a mainstay for Dell. But competitor Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) is still killing it in many categories where both companies operate.

For years, I've been of the opinion that Dell should re-enter the retail store consumer space with slick and elegant notebook PCs way back. It's corporate sales won't keep HP-like growth going, but if Dell can get its butt in gear and get its new and colorful laptop PCs on retail shelves, it may stand a chance. Dell's "direct only" model is still good but it's not the only leg the company needs to grow, and it knows this.

The retail experiment with selling excess and older Dimension desktop systems to Wal-Mart to gain a retail presence is a good start, but there is much more. Yes, Dell is making progress, but it could be making so much more with a full lineup of cutting-edge and price-sensitive laptop systems in many large U.S. retailers. Otherwise, HP and Taiwan's Acer will continue to eat its lunch in terms of consumer market share and shipment growth throughout 2008.

Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) released Q2 financial this afternoon after the market closed. As I indicated yesterday, this Q2 period was probably one of the more highly anticipated earnings releases from the computer maker in quite a while. Just a few weeks ago, the company concluded its own internal financial investigation into possible financial shenanigans and the results included over $150 million in quarterly restatements stemming back to 2002. The official SEC investigation is not through yet. If you want details on the Q2 results before the webcast with Dell executives begins, here you go.

Dell's Q2 conference call will most likely shed some light on the fight the computer maker has had since January of this year to try and catch up to larger rival Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), which reported a touch under $25 billion in revenues for its latest quarter.

Has Dell seen increased shipments of PCs with its newer and colorful laptop systems? Is the Wal-Mart retail relationship going well for the company? These questions and many more are on tap here in a few minutes once the analysts dig in with questions.

Analyst expectations were for Dell to report an earnings figure of 30 cents per share on revenue of $14.63 billion. It will be interesting to see if any analyst questions come up about this week's acquisition of smaller PC rival Gateway, Inc. (NYSE: GTW) by Taiwan's Acer. Stay tuned by using the "Refresh" button on your web browser to see all the minute-by-minute updates below. All times are in CST.

Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) CFO Don Carty sounded pretty confident last week that the accounting fraud inside the computer company, which resulted in a restatement of earnings from 2003 to 2006, was being cleaned up. But there are still many questions left unanswered including figuring out how much company founder Michael Dell knew about these shenanigans that occurred while his hand-picked buddy Kevin Rollins was chief executive.

Mr. Dell's role at the company he founded during the time of all these accounting problems will be under close scrutiny as the official SEC investigation continues, now that Dell's internal investigation has been completed. Did he know that revenue recognition was being shifted around in order for every quarter to meet (or beat) market expectations?

As Chairman, Mr. Dell probably had no idea what was going on and trusted Rollins' command of the day-to-day operations of the company. But in the last few months, this arrangement clearly wasn't working well.

Dell lost its CFO in the last eight months and the role was replaced. Then, Rollins was let go. Was this because of shoddy performance or financial shiftiness? Probably a little bit of both for Rollins. But with Dell still struggling to better compete against a resurgent Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) and others.

Financial scandals aside, Mr. Dell has quite a bit of work on his hands to convince Wall Street the company now is on the right path.

Michael Dell said this week that the company bearing his name "has a long way to go" to make up for lost ground. In recent years, the computer maker saw renewed competition eating away into its market share and stealing business away while many areas inside Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) languished under former CEO Kevin Rollins. From customer service issues, layoff announcements to boring product designs, Dell's recent fortunes had not been anything worthy of writing home about. That has changed in recent months, however.

Yesterday in New York, Dell kicked off a new product line, Vostro, meant for small businesses with fewer than 25 people. In many cases, these companies do not have a dedicated IT support staff, so these Vostro PCs will do away with much of the software that normally comes on Dell's consumer PCs and will feature more business-friendly software geared towards easy networking and backup capability. Are these just re-branded existing laptop systems? Perhaps, although Dell says the line is "entirely new". It is the marketing and the software bundles installed on them make them different regardless.

Dell went as far as to say that with the new product line launch it aims to capture way more than its current 16.2% market share of companies with less than 100 employees. A Dell representative stated that "Given the amount of resources we've allocated to this, it wouldn't be viable if we didn't gain market share." Sounds like Dell has poured some significant resources in Vostro, although an exact figure was not given. Dell's recent launch of newer (and way sleeker) XPS laptop systems and this newer Vostro line are both good moves for increasing its market share. In other news, Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) is most definitely not sitting still after unseating Dell last year as the world's largest PC maker. Story at 11...

With Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) set to release its Q1 earnings tomorrow after the bell, what will the troubled company be able to say about its latest three months?

Dell has seen round after round of bad news in 2007, with its CEO booted, many executive changes, lawsuits over poor customer service and a sales slump that has put competitor Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ) in front of Dell for the first time in years.

Add to that an internal and SEC accounting investigation that has yet to shed any news publicly, and you have a global computer maker stymied in quite a quagmire. Dell's earnings estimates call for a $0.26 EPS figure, which would be down a little under 22% from the year-ago quarter. When former CEO Kevin Rollins was predicting $20 billion quarters for Dell a few years ago, he couldn't have been more incorrect. The industry shifted faster than Dell could react to (especially the consumer PC segment) and the company has not yet recovered. Meanwhile, competitors have duplicated Dell's penchant for direct sales (and associated cost savings), leaving the Round Rock, Texas company with little to no competitive advantage as of late.

Dell's plunging fundamentals and market share losses have eaten the company alive, but with founder Michael Dell at the helm again, expect massive shifts and changes beyond what we've already seen in the last four months. Dell's pending entry into retail (Wal-Mart) will be a first test as Dell plunges as fast as possible into new markets in search of regaining what it can in a commodity market. Stay tuned tomorrow at 4pm EST when I'll be liveblogging Dell's Q1 results right here at BloggingStocks.