A depressed stock, a sizable cash pile, not to mention a potentially amenable founder/chief executive with his own big equity stake, has rekindled talk about a leveraged buyout of Dell.

In a reminder of why the company might want to go private, Gartner said Monday that global PC shipments declined 4.9% in the fourth quarter from the prior year. Dell is trying to transition more of its business to sales of other gear like storage, networking and software, but PCs and commodity servers still make up the majority of its revenue. The transition will be lumpy and perhaps best done outside the public's view.

But a couple of issues would complicate matters. One is that Dell says 'substantially all' of its $14.2 billion pile of cash and investments is held outside the U.S. That cash likely can't be brought home to help fund a buyout without incurring a steep repatriation tax penalty. A December analysis from Goldman Sachs put the internal rate of return on a Dell LBO at just 8%, unless buyout sponsors were somehow able to access that cash with no tax penalty. That boosted Goldman's IRR estimate to 31%.

Another concern is the loss of flexibility to invest. An LBO would leave a private Dell focused squarely on paying down debt. Its ability to strategically acquire businesses would be limited unless private-equity investors were willing to pitch in more capital down the line. But that would also affect returns.

Even if tough to pull off, the possibility of an LBO at least puts a floor under the value of the shares.