PAR  (PAR) Trade Now »     Rate PAR  -  Discuss PAR  -  Add to Watch List        

Dell CFO Brian Gladden indicated in a story in the New York Times today that the company needs to diversify its revenue base, and could make acquisitions in several areas: servers and storage systems, software and services.

Certainly, the company has the capacity to make some significant purchases, with $8.5 billion in cash and short-term investments as of the end of October. So what might they buy?

Avi Cohen, managing director at Avian Securities, has some ideas about potential candidates, but sees plusses and minuses in each case. He outlined them in a brief research note:

RBC Capital this morning got religion on the slowdown in IT spending, cutting ratings on four stocks and slashing estimates and price targets on a host of others. The multiple moves boil down to this statement, which is repeated in most of the individual reports this morning: “We are taking a more conservative stance across our coverage universe to reflect a degrading environment for global IT spending.”

The downgrades:

The Street continues to come to grips with the arrival of slower IT spending. As I noted in an earlier post, RBC Capital this morning lowered their outlook on a host of stocks to reflect an eroding outlook for IT spending. As it turns out, Pacific Crest’s tech analysts today made a similar move, downloading four tech stocks and reducing estimates and/or price targets on various others.