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Then why are they sitting on it??!! You should be blaming Apple for sitting on a pile of cash that is doing nothing for anybody. They could be investing it productively: growing the company, growing the economy, creating jobs. Instead, due to their lack of imagination, they are parking it in a vault. And you can defend this?

I think after almost going bust, they sit on cash to ensure that never happens again. Most of Japan Inc. does the same thing. Right or wrong, its just a more conservative way of running a business - planning for another rainy day. Some would say its more prudent and reasonable than the kind of overspending and thinking only of today that Corporate America can otherwise be blamed for.

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You make it sound so personal. He's in it for the money, just like every other shareholder of AAPL.

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I know. The gall of an investor looking to make a profit. Where's the "ticked off" emoticon??!! :mad: Found it.

In your over simplifying you have misrepresented what people are saying. Sure, inestors need a return, but there is a difference between the kind of investor who wants to make money through smart investment choices, and the kind who seeks to make money through manipulating the company they invest in and telling half truths to try to get the chips to fall in their favor. If he is making money - somebody else will be losing - be it Apple, other inestors, or society in general. People dont like that.
 
This.



And this.

The comments in these many threads are virtually all depressingly knee-jerk. I apologize to anyone who might feel offended by my being short with them, but it is seriously frustrating to those of us who actually have something at stake here, and have taken the trouble to understand the issues, to be constantly dealing with repetitive, nasty, uninformed, and insulting comments.

Seriously, I don't care about how the guy looks. I don't care about his history (which I know all about already), how you want to punch him out, and I sure don't want to hear comments about his religion (really, MR, you going to allow that?). If you aren't going to discuss the facts and merits of the man's proposal, then what's the point?

Your avatar says youve been a member since 2002, but your words sound like youve never read a thread on this website before. Part of the fun of reading these forums is laughing at the shoot from the hip, non-thought out, emotion over logic, one sided, fight to the death posts of many users here. This topic is no different. People arent thinking as logical and reasonable investors - and thats way more fun to read!
 
BS. :rolleyes: Icahn's entire opinion is based on the notion that lots of cash is liability rather than a strength. Which of course, is utter nonsense. Most of my Apple stock in an IRA. His scheme has a better chance of doing harm to Apple and my stock value, long before my retirement. I'm guessing everyone at Apple, including Tim Cook and all the executive team feel the same about their AAPL shares as well.

[aimless rant snipped]

Reading his letter might have helped you, but that would be too much to hope for I am sure. It also might have helped if you'd read my posts, but that would also be too much to hope for.

I'm guessing you are very wrong, but you will only have wait and see.

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Your avatar says youve been a member since 2002, but your words sound like youve never read a thread on this website before. Part of the fun of reading these forums is laughing at the shoot from the hip, non-thought out, emotion over logic, one sided, fight to the death posts of many users here. This topic is no different. People arent thinking as logical and reasonable investors - and thats way more fun to read!

A person could decide that spreading misinformation is a big hoot, but I suppose I'm just not one of those people. Apparently I'm not the only one.
 
I don't know if that's a good enough reason to go all in on creating their own network. Especially since the net neutrality issue may so easily be remedied by a law passed by Congress.



Again, changing their business model to the extent that would cost billions upon billions of dollars is not what makes Apple Apple. They have been successful because they stick to a small number of products/services that they do well.

You kidding? Apple pretty much changes their business models every 5 years or so, with each new major product introduction.
 
You kidding? Apple pretty much changes their business models every 5 years or so, with each new major product introduction.

Actually, no, they don't. A new product is not a new business model, it is a new product.

The business model to which I believe he is referring to indirectly is Apple growing their own tech at home, rather than buying it. Icahn pointed out in his letter that Apple has spent less that $500M a year on average over the last 17 years acquiring outside tech. The idea that they'd suddenly need tens of billions let alone $150B for some huge acquisition or project is nuts (and considering how rarely they work out, we'd better hope it stays nuts). Apple isn't going to radically change a business model that they've had in place for even more than the past 17 years. In reality, it's been around since Day One.
 
Actually, no, they don't. A new product is not a new business model, it is a new product.

The business model to which I believe he is referring to indirectly is Apple growing their own tech at home, rather than buying it. Icahn pointed out in his letter that Apple has spent less that $500M a year on average over the last 17 years acquiring outside tech. The idea that they'd suddenly need tens of billions let alone $150B for some huge acquisition or project is nuts (and considering how rarely they work out, we'd better hope it stays nuts). Apple isn't going to radically change a business model that they've had in place for even more than the past 17 years. In reality, it's been around since Day One.

Depends on how Apple defines business model. If they define it as "Selling things to make money" then that really doesn't change. If they define it as "Selling desktop computers" then that obviously changed to now include "Selling music online... selling phones to phone carriers.. selling mobile tablets" and so on.

Really, Apple radically changes their business model every few years. It is what they need to do to surprise their competitors. A static business model is an uncompetitive business model.
 
I think that's the point. To vilify him and make him appear to be a total creeper. Which he is.

Use a photo showing him as the stone cold business man that he is, not the slightly weird but ultimately good soul that this current photos suggests.
 
I wish I was a shareholder, large ammount too. Tim is doing right by everyone keeping the money available for emergencies and future growth. Carl is a disease, one I can only hope the world can be cured of sooner than later.

All we need is for a product to have a fault and need a callback which can ruin a lot of companies. Apple has the funds to weather such a thing. This is good for investors. Increasing your stock value by $100 only to have a guy dump $4b worth and crash your values is stupidity.
 
Yes, and understood it, too.

The letter fails to convince me, that Carl Icahn is, indeed, a long term investor. He says so, but why should anyone believe him? He sums up the common knowledge about Apple tech, yet he makes mistakes (iPad released in 2012). A longterm investor, who is making such pressures on other shareholders should, in my opinion, have invested in the company earlier than a year ago.

This guy talks about the buyback ever since he took the position, which is absolutely untrustworthy. How would he profit from the price of $840 a share if he didn't sell that stock? That is not a longterm investment in my book.
 
Apple should

buy NVDA (9B), AMD (2.7B) = less than 20B including takeover margin
sell off CPU part of AMD (do not fight Intel)
put the resulting graphics giant in new company to avoid anti-trust issues
 
Why do people presume that amassing more and more cash (and not using it) is good for the company?

I don't think anybody's expecting Apple to suddenly release 150bn to shareholders, but a buy back scheme would benefit shareholders without damaging Apple even a little.

In fact, I doubt that financially, and from an operations and growth point of view it would even make a dent on Apple's strength. They're not going to suddenly need 150bn to ride out some disaster. They'd have to mess up pretty seriously to have to dig in to that cash pile.

Meanwhile it's sitting there and has been growing for years. Didn't Tim Cook acknowledge that something had to be done with that cash a few years ago?

Icahn could be judged on anything you like but this projection makes good sense.

Don't worry, you'll still get your iPhone 6.
 
Go read the article. Then you'll understand his words better. I agree with what he said.

Not sure what you mean. I read Icahn's letter to stockholders, and agree with most of what he says. And I don't need to like him to see the truth in it.

The most striking difference between what I hear from Carl Icahn is that he is far, far more optimistic about Apple's future than so many supposed Apple diehards here. For one thing, Icahn isn't predicting that Apple will go from vastly profitable today to massively unprofitable at some time in the near future, which seems to be the standard answer from posters here for why $150B in cash assets may not be enough.

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Depends on how Apple defines business model. If they define it as "Selling things to make money" then that really doesn't change. If they define it as "Selling desktop computers" then that obviously changed to now include "Selling music online... selling phones to phone carriers.. selling mobile tablets" and so on.

Really, Apple radically changes their business model every few years. It is what they need to do to surprise their competitors. A static business model is an uncompetitive business model.

If they define it by building their own technology, which they always have. If they define it as end-to-end development, which they always have. They have never changed that fundamental approach, one which incidentally they do not share with every other tech company. It sets Apple apart, in fact.
 
If I had over a hundred million dollars like this guy, yes it would be enough

I don't know that you could be so sure. Especially if you worked what you deemed extremely hard for every dollar. I make three times what I did 10 years ago. I have a comfortable car, house, money in the bank etc. but it doesn't seem like enough. I'd like an even more comfortable car, a nicer home in a nicer neighborhood. Maybe a vacation property or two, a boat. You get my drift. It's easy to draw an arbitrary line on an amount of money that far exceeds your current wealth. Saying that's enough when you actually get it is a completely different ball of wax.

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You kidding? Apple pretty much changes their business models every 5 years or so, with each new major product introduction.

I don't think you understand what their business model is.
 
The letter fails to convince me, that Carl Icahn is, indeed, a long term investor. He says so, but why should anyone believe him? He sums up the common knowledge about Apple tech, yet he makes mistakes (iPad released in 2012). A longterm investor, who is making such pressures on other shareholders should, in my opinion, have invested in the company earlier than a year ago.

This guy talks about the buyback ever since he took the position, which is absolutely untrustworthy. How would he profit from the price of $840 a share if he didn't sell that stock? That is not a longterm investment in my book.

I'm not concerned whether he's in it for the longterm, if only because that concept is so elastic. He's in it to make money, which coincidentally, so am I. Trust also doesn't factor in, as far as I am concerned.

Small fry investors learn from hard experience that they are along for the ride. The ride can be a good or bad one depending on how large investors act and react. Apple has been riding a long wave of negative sentiment from these investors. Like Icahn or not, agree with him totally, partially, or not at all, the fact remains that he's been the best if not only cheerleader we've had for some time. His money and his mouth are in the same place, which is more than we can say for a lot of people.
 
BS. :rolleyes: Icahn's entire opinion is based on the notion that lots of cash is liability rather than a strength. Which of course, is utter nonsense.

Wonderful rebuttal of the proposal of one of the greatest investors ever.

As a long term shareholder, the overall health, sustainability and growth of the company is light years more important to that value that Ichan's highly speculative and risky proposal.

High speculative and risky? You want to know what I think is speculative and risky? Holding onto $150b (and counting) of cash which by its very existence presents a risk that management will use it sub-optimally. Look at 2013: if Apple had given the cash back to shareholders they could have invested that money in other companies and returned about 30% instead of the....1% it made at Apple. You should be furious but you're too ignorant to realize it.

I've said this before: If I buy a share of stock for around $500 I want to buy as much of a great technology company as I can, not $300 worth of a tech company and $200 worth of cash. People don't understand how much $150b is. If Apple ever needed to materially tap into that cash horde due to their underlying businesses drying up then I'd have rather they not have the cash on hand and liquidate before running through all the shareholders' money.

If this clown wanted a better return, and is such an investing whiz, where the hell was he when AAPL was at $12? Or $20? Or $120?

Hearing a random person on the internet criticizing the investment record of Carl Icahn is beyond absurd.

It's really interesting how people NOT responsible for the earning and saving of Apple's cash, feel so entitled to suggest how it should be spent.

Wait, the OWNERS of the company shouldn't feel entitled to suggest how their cash should be spent?

It's not even close to your job, nor expertise. Fact: Tim Cook has way more experience managing and turning that cash into something, and creating value for the company's shareholders than Carl. The amazing part is that he's done it through actual productivity (which also kinda explains why AAPL has grown so well over time).

The existence and massive growth of the cash position is proof that it wasn't needed to fund Apple's greatest growth years.


That money gives Apple lots of room to ride out dramatically increasing labor costs in China, any future 3rd party parts supplier hiccups, misguided national (or international) economic policies or trends, etc. Any of these alone is a huge reason to keep that cash, long before any acquisition or future product/market talk ever enters the picture. The fact that you don't see any of this, is proof enough that you are completely wrong and very short-sighted.

You simply don't understand how much money $150b is, how easily Apple can tap into the debt markets at near-record low interest rates (and get a tax shield), and how much cash they generate every year.



If I had over a hundred million dollars like this guy, yes it would be enough

You say that now. Have you considered the idea that he actually likes/loves what he does? Someone in finance can't love their job like a teacher can? How wonderfully condescending of you.

And this is were the differences of opinion flow from. Some believe as you and I do, that the proper thing for the company to do to reward it's shareholders, is to continue to invest in making the best Apple possible and that the rewards will come.

They can continue to invest untold billions and still give shareholders money.


One thing is clear to me...One should know what they are buying before they buy it. I don't think Mr. Icahn has any idea what he bought here- He clearly does not get Apple or understand it's history. It didn't work out for him at Dell and it's not going to work out at Apple.

Oh, you mean the situation at Dell where he secured hundreds of millions more for all common shareholders after Dell and Silverlake made a deficient offer to a rubber-stamping Board before he got involved?

Newsflash to Apple shareholders: you trailed the market by ~20% last year. You have lots of cash tied up in your Apple stock earning nothing (and not being used) when it could have been put into a passive index fund.
 
Not sure what you mean. I read Icahn's letter to stockholders, and agree with most of what he says. And I don't need to like him to see the truth in it.

Your previous comment was said in a way that said "you didn't read the article". But we move on.

I see Icahn's point from the letters. And he makes some good points which I agree with. But his way to achieve the goals stated in the letter is just super unethical on so many different levels.
 
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