Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) on Thursday postponed a shareholder meeting until July 24, a signal that the company didn’t have the votes to pass its proposed $24.4 billion sale to Chief Executive Officer Michael Dell and Silver Lake Management LLC.

The vote will be at 6 p.m. New York time that day, the company said at a meeting today at its Round Rock, Texas, headquarters. The delay prolongs months of jousting between the buyout group and investors seeking a higher price.

“The only way this vote gets delayed is if it gets too close to call,” said Angelo Zino, an analyst at Standard & Poor’s Financial Services in New York. “They could try and stall and get Michael Dell to revise or raise his offer.”

CEO Dell, who founded the company as a college student in 1984, proposed taking it private to stem years of ebbing sales and profit as consumers shift away from PCs to tablets and smartphones. He has argued it will be easier to make investments in mobile devices and data-center computing without the need to satisfy profit-hungry public investors.

The shares of Dell rose 2.2 percent to $13.16 at 9:43 a.m. in New York. The deal Dell and Silver Lake put to a shareholder vote represents a premium of 25 percent over the computer maker’s closing share price of $10.88 on Jan. 11, the last trading day before news of a deal surfaced.

David Frink, a spokesman for Dell, declined to comment on the vote delay.

Majority Needed

Michael Dell and Silver lake needed a majority of shares to vote in favor of the buyout, excluding the CEO’s 16 percent stake. Since announcing the buyout Feb. 5, the special committee of Dell’s board has argued that the company’s prospects of a turnaround are better outside of the public lens.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who holds an 8.7 percent stake in Dell, has been agitating to force Dell and Silver Lake to sweeten their $13.65-a-share offer to take the computer maker private.

As of last week, investors opposed to the transaction owned more than 20 percent of Dell shares, according to a report from shareholder adviser Glass Lewis & Co., which is backing Dell’s bid with Silver Lake. Opponents may also include Harris Associates LP, Yacktman Asset Management Co. and Pzena Investment Management Inc., according to the report.

The buyout by Dell and partner Silver Lake won key endorsements this month from Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. and two other influential proxy advisory firms. It also has the backing of a special committee of Dell’s board that evaluated potential transactions on the company’s behalf.