Acer founder declares company would welcome a takeover bid

From the late 1990s through the mid-2000s, Acer, the low-cost Chinese OEM, rose like a rocket. It spun off multiple successful companies like BenQ and Wistron, while company revenues rose from $4.9 billion in 2003 to $11.31 billion in 2006. Nine years later, however, the company is in a shambles. Its honorary chair and founder, Stan Shih, who began the company with $25,000 in capital in 1976, has announced that a buyout or takeover bid would be welcome.

Acer lost $90 million in the first half of its current financial year. Bit-Tech reports that sales have fallen 33% in the past month and its share price stands at half of where it was in April. Despite these massive headwinds, Acer remains the fifth-largest PC OEM in the world — a stunning reminder that the bottom has fallen out of the PC business to such a degree that even the largest vendors aren’t making any money.

When Shih was asked if Acer would be interested in entertaining any offers that companies like Dell or HP might make, Shih told reporters that such interest would be welcome. What’s a bit more puzzling, however, is that Shih went on to say that any company that bought Acer would pay dearly for purchasing an “empty shell.”

“U.S. and European management teams usually are concerned about money, their CEOs only work for money. But Taiwanese are more concerned about a sense of mission and emotional factors,” he said.

Shi’s remarks were later confirmed by a company spokesperson, but I’m wondering if some nuance of context isn’t getting lost in communication. Acer may have taken a beating in recent months, but the company still reported revenue of $1.94B in its Q2 2015 report. That’s no small amount of revenue, even if it’s not in the same ballpark as what the largest OEMs typically make. It’s enough cash to make it unclear why the founder of the company would characterize it as an “empty shell,” especially when such phrasing would harm the chances of a successful sale or merger.

Last year, Acer’s CEO, Jason Chen, declared that Acer would bet the future of the company on the ascendence of Chromebooks and hybrid 2-in-1 devices. Judging by the company’s latest sales results, those initiatives have failed. Acer’s problems are a perfect representation of the deep issues facing the entire PC business. While hundreds of millions of devices continue to ship on a yearly basis, PC margins have fallen to the point that only a handful of companies can earn money in the business. What that means for the future of the entire industry is unclear, but consumer PC sales are no longer expected to recover until some point after 2019.