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Investor Carl Icahn Dumps Apple Shares Over China Concerns

Naaaaak said:
Think about the billions that Tim Cook spent to buy back stock that was near all-time highs – and is still spending! Billions to buy back ownership of an exceedingly small fraction of the company. Absolutely wasted. Flushed. Burned. I have no idea why he succumbed to this douchebag, whose plan was clearly to ride a bump induced by buybacks among other things, then cash out big.

We like to make fun of MS for buying Skype for 8 billion and other dumb inflated tech purchases. The billions Cook spent could have been so much more productive, such as:
  • Hiring significantly more QA and devs to make iOS and Mac OS less ******.
  • Playing Apple ads for half the spots in the Superbowl.
  • Lobbying the **** out of Congress.
  • Building identical spaceship headquarters in other countries (in case they need to actually relocate for tax purposes).
And he'd still have money left over from this wasteful buyback!

Tim Cook's stock buyback plan has been the single largest burning of cash in the tech industry by far. He was a good operations guy, but he has no sense of direction and only offers leadership on social issues. That's worth billions I guess.
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He had to make wallstreet happy and keep his bonuses coming. He is only concerned with what is needed to meet or exceed the whisper numbers for the next quarter.
 
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I love my iPhone 6s+ and consider it the best smartphone ever made. But with coming iPhones dropping the headphone plug, I would also quickly sell all my Apple stock, if I had any.
 
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Apple Corps said:
You got that right big time !!!

The narrative on the financial news now is that Facebook and Amazon are soaring BECAUSE of their visionary CEOs. The specifically point out that Tim Cook is not that person for Apple - and that is why the stock continues to drop - very low confidence in Tim Cook and his team.

The electric car - if there is one underway - will be a huge disaster surpased only by the waste of shareholder money in buybacks.
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No Doubt Tim Cook is a very intelligent man, but he's not a front man by any means. He's more like one of the dependable out of sight employees that make a company great. But for being a front man and promoter of your company. you need someone with a lot more charisma and ummph. Just too boring to watch at his press conferences etc. He doesn't display any excitement at all. Just my 2 cents from my view as a little guy.
 
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felt. said:
Bunch of haters in this thread. He bought low, and sold high. It's pretty much the point.
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Maybe my math is wrong, but given the split he bought at around $70 and sold in the $90s. Sure he made loads of money, but that is hardly buying low and selling high. Especially when he predicted it to go to $240 as quoted in the linked article. He is exiting because he doesn't see it gaining him big in the near future.
 
tourbus1 said:
No Doubt Tim Cook is a very intelligent man, but he's not a front man by any means. He's more like one of the dependable out of sight employees that make a company great. But for being a front man and promoter of your company. you need someone with a lot more charisma and ummph. Just too boring to watch at his press conferences etc. He doesn't display any excitement at all. Just my 2 cents from my view as a little guy.
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I agree with your points - but real product substance is also a key requirement - and Cook is sooooo lacking in that arena.
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felt. said:
Bunch of haters in this thread. He bought low, and sold high. It's pretty much the point.
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Agree - that is the point for all of we shareholders. I just don't see how he can compliment Cook - this downfall is way more than the stability in China he mentioned.
 
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TallManNY said:
Apple is not a charity and does not have to do those things. And it does many civic minded activities anyway. Apple didn't do anything to satisfy Icahn and Wall Street. It did buy backs for its shareholders which mainly include ordinary and normal well to do folk who own diversified portfolio of stocks through their retirement and other accounts; not only or even in a majority the Wall Street titans. That is how the vast majority of US public shares are owned. Even the $2 billion that Icahn references is nothing to do with what he made. He made his investors $2 billion, but those investor are numerous.

The buybacks are reasonable uses of capital. Apple already is so busy it can't get around to refreshing something as simple as the Mac Mini. And it continues to have plenty of cash and so is able to do any long term investments that it wishes to do. It just can't come up with any additional ones that make sense. So tons of cash continues to sit around.

And buying far less profitable companies at a premium which is what would have happened if Apple had bought something like Twitter or Yahoo is not going to add to the bottom line.
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They are a huge waste of shareholder money - in no way a reasonable use. Return the $$$ directly to shareholders via far larger dividends.
 
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When it became clear that the pump phase was over, he dumped. Big surprise. He's an opportunist, shouldn't be worthy of news.
 
Agreed, just wait until robotics and automation start to kick off, all of those low paying factory jobs in China will be taken over by fully automated factories located in western countries. Apple is starting to update their services throughout the year but you're spot on in that they need to do this with a lot more frequency, like Google, as it feels like Apple is very slow in this area.
 
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Alonso Quijano said:
Two years later and Macrumors still uses the same photo

https://www.macrumors.com/2014/01/28/icahn-buys-more-shares/
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Didn't they use this photo last time?

image.jpg
 
bladerunner2000 said:
I didnt know who this guy was and googled his name but ended up on a wikipedia entry about greed.
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I think you're misunderstanding what owning stock in a company means. Owning stock, even just 1 share, is just to make money. There's really no other purpose of it. It's not like when you buy Apple stock the money goes into Johnny Ive's secret lab so he can innovate more. And, remember, the whole existence of Apple is built on the fact that its purpose is to make money for its investors, just like Carl Icahn.
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ghost187 said:
The stock should go up over this move. I wish there was a way to ban him from purchasing anymore shares.
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Ban him? Why?
 
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Spanky Deluxe said:
Oh look, it's this douche again, trying to manipulate stock prices again. /groan
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The whole stock market is based on manipulation. Deal with it. It's run by humans, not computers. And do you think Tim Cook wasn't trying to manipulate its value when he proclaimed iPhone SE "demand exceeded expectations" (without giving 1 shred of evidence supporting this)?
 
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Apple Corps said:
They are a huge waste of shareholder money - in no way a reasonable use. Return the $$$ directly to shareholders via far larger dividends.
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Theoretically this is more tax efficient since dividends are taxes and share buy backs increase the value of shares by reversing dilution.
 
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