Will Michael Dell buy his own company?

NEW YORK, USA: Since the technology stocks are at their cheapest in 20 years, the possibility of Dell Inc. chairman and chief executive officer Michael Dell buying the computer maker or pay a “huge” special dividend, cannot be ruled out, according to Lee Ainslie, managing partner at Maverick Capital Management LLC.

“It’s a possibility,” a Bloomberg report quoted Ainslie as saying at the Value Investing Congress in New York on Tuesday.

He also said technology stocks are at their cheapest in 20 years and the weaker dollar will likely benefit the entire sector.

Ainslie, whose Maverick Capital Management oversees $11.4 billion in assets, said a pool of value tech stocks including Adobe Systems, Cisco Systems, Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard, International Business Machine, Intel Corp. and Microsoft provide a high free-cash-flow yield of 12 percent this year and 13 percent in 2011.

Maverick, one of the world's biggest hedge funds which is located in Dallas and New York, had about a third of its stock portfolio invested in technology companies — more than any other sector — at the end of June, according to regulatory filings.

Ainslie, speaking at the annual Value Investing Congress in New York, said tech stocks are attractive also because of the weaker dollar, which can help U.S. companies that export. Many U.S. tech companies earn half or more of their revenues overseas.

"The weak dollar is helpful for technology companies," he said.

Ainslie said technology companies are now holding more cash on their balance sheets than they have since the 1950s. "This is especially true for technology companies," he said. "It is sitting there and not being used.

"We want to make sure these companies are using cash in productive ways like buybacks, dividend payments or acquisitions."

He worried that technology companies are not spending enough on capital expenditures. He also said innovations are more important than elasticity. "Most people can't name the processor running their iPads," he added.

Ainslie said fundamentals have not played an important role in stocks this year against the backdrop of aggressive monetary stimulus by the Federal Reserve.

Similar to the phenomenon last year, the lowest quality stocks, many of which carry so-called "junk" credit ratings, have been the best performers in 2010.