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Carl Icahn Increases Apple Stake to $2.5 Billion, Requests Immediate $150 Billion Stock Buyback

Thank u Tim for good Iphone and Ipad. next pls make new Itouch with big memory.

thank u Tim again and God bless.
 
i'm pretty sure that if Icahn witnesses a car accident, he would jump on the victim's wallet instead of calling an ambulance :rolleyes:
 
You know, something I've admired about Apple is their financial restraint. They don't operate with a large percent of debt. Now this jerkoff wants Apple to borrow more money than their total cash reserves just to make this guy some money. This is how companies die. I hope Apple doesn't listen to him. Apple isn't a cash box to be raided. Part of their stability is in their cash reserved.
 
guzhogi said:
While Apple does have a lot of stock on hand (over $100 billion, right?), it's not enough buy back $150 billion worth of stock. Plus, most of that money is oversees. AM I correct in thinking that Apple would have to pay taxes on bringing it back to the states for the buyback? I don't see Apple willing to go probably tens of billions of dollars in debt to try to raise stock prices by a sizable amount. Wasn't Steve Jobs proud that Apple, at the time, had no debt? Sure, Apple could probably pay off the debt in a few years, but even then they'd just be breaking even with no cash reserves.
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My reading of the excerpts from the letter (haven't read it in its entirety) was that he wanted Apple to take on debt (at a relatively low interest rate) to fund the buyback. The idea being that future profits could fund the repayment of that debt. I don't think he's recommending taking the massive tax bill to bring all of Apple's overseas profits back home. But I could see Apple expanding the buyback if they were able to push Washington to ease taxes on foreign profits.

It's a risky proposition, and I'm not sure that it necessarily helps Apple (the company) make better products and services for customers. However, I could see the benefit to investors who already own stock. For those of us who don't have a big foot in investment markets, these moves make Apple stock more unattainable, short of investing in mutual funds that hold Apple stock.
 
Classic pump and dump

This is a classic pump and dump.

1. Buy the stock
2. Talk it up so that the price goes up to record highs
3. Sell at the top
4. Stock price goes down and little guy who bought at record highs loses his shirt.

This type of scheme is illegal if he does anything to push the stock up other than buy and talk.
 
Dear Apple,

Don't spend your money on buying back stock. Invest it in fixing Maps; and for heaven's sake can we please have a persistent auto-size-to-file/folder-name option for columns in the Finder?

Thanx
 
how did he come up with the assumption that AAPL will trade at 11x EBIT??
... if it were trading at that right now it would be around $680. What makes him think that it'll increase to 11x when the company gets even larger?

.
 
wow classic bully. Icahn is a douche. He uses his wealth to leverage companies into manipulating their stock for him. Basically forces them to bring him returns.

Did the same with his tweets earlier. Hes actually found a great loophole for himself. Invest in something undervallued> market your shares> bring in instant returns from the flock> move on… its borderline legal. The SEC can put an end to it, call him out on market manipulation. Plenty of evidence of it.
 
Destroy Apple as we know it

To do this would ONLY benefit him. This would destroy the company.
 
markdj said:
This is a classic pump and dump.

1. Buy the stock
2. Talk it up so that the price goes up to record highs
3. Sell at the top
4. Stock price goes down and little guy who bought at record highs loses his shirt.

This type of scheme is illegal if he does anything to push the stock up other than buy and talk.
Click to expand...
Tbh a little guy shouldn't be buying 1000$ stocks
 
Icahn's letter is just a polite way of saying things will get ugly if Apple doesn't cooperate. He's a master of taking things like this to a shareholder vote to decide (aka, a proxy fight). And often the shareholders who count--hedge funds, institutional investors-- are as mercurial as he is. Any company with a large "treasure chest" is a target, and Apple presumably knows this and has legal strategies in place to deal with it. But Icahn also has legal strategies to deal with any protections Apple may have. Ugly indeed.
 
He should be jailed for stock manipulation? He's purposely trying to rise the stock of Apple by pushing for a buy back program.
 
Better served to use there cash reserves to strengthen future products by acquiring other tech companies to build there future. Set aside about 30 billion for that. Also find ways to build product and be a good corporate American company and bring some more production and jobs back into the states. I think they are way to dependent on China production. That climate could change for the worse at any given moment. They still should do some buy back for there investors no question but not at those high amounts.
 
Badandy said:
These threads always end the same way - with a bunch of Apple fans who don't understand finance making irrelevant and exaggerated points. I will leave the thread stating a few things:

1) Apple's duty is to its shareholders. The company is not run for the benefit of its managers and they do not own the majority of the company.
2) Apple has had and currently has enough cash that performing an increased buyback would not hinder its ability to make great, new products. If they needed the cash over the last ten years the cash pile would simply not be as large as it is.
3) When I buy $500 of Apple stock I want to buy a focused technology company, not $250 of a tech company and $250 of cash earning 1% per year.
Click to expand...

Correct. And Icahn is right. I even agree with him about financing this with debt.
 
So... what's happened to the "[this] looks bad but Apple does [this] because it's primary responsibility is to maximize shareholder profits" mantra? You can't have it both ways.
 
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