Dell considers plan to return to the stock market to reduce its $46bn of debts

Dell considering IPO five years after going private

Hardware giant Dell is reportedly considering a plan to go public , just five years after its founder and CEO Michael Dell took it private. The aim of the plan, according to reports, would be to cut the company's $43 billion in debts.

However, it is one of a number of ideas under consideration by the company.

The Texas-based business will allegedly hold a board meeting before the end of this month to discuss different options.

Michael Dell joined forces with private equity firm Silver Lake Management in 2013 to take the business private in a $24.9 billion deal.

At the time, he said he wanted to transform the company he founded in his university dorm room and claimed that he could do it more easily away from the treadmill of quarterly reporting and shareholder demands.

However, Dell's $67 billion acquisition of storage hardware company EMC, with its attendent stake in VMWare, has dramatically leveraged the company's debts just as hardware sales are being pinched by cloud computing.

Speaking about the deal at the time, Michael Dell said: "We are at the dawn of the next industrial revolution. Our world is becoming more intelligent and more connected by the minute, and ultimately will become intertwined with a vast Internet of Things, paving the way for our customers to do incredible things.

"This is why we created Dell Technologies. We have the products, services, talent and global scale to be a catalyst for change and guide customers, large and small, on their digital journey."

However, Bloomberg reports that the company is now considering re-floating on the stock exchange.

By going public, the company could raise funds to pay off this debt - or at least some of it. Bloomberg estimates that the company currently has $46 billion in debt, including $3 billion of bonds coming up for repayment in 2018 and $4.35 billion next year.

These could be rolled-over or refinanced, but with the administration of President Trump expected to raise interest rates this year, the cost of borrowing will almost certainly be going up.

It's also rumoured that the company is also looking to sell its shares in cloud computing company Pivotal Software, which could fetch up to $7 billion in cash.