If Apple chief executive Tim Cook pushes for a bigger stock buyback, the stock could be almost equivalent to $700 per share, said activist investor Carl Icahn to Reuters. He added that he has a “large position” in the company because of his cumulative stocks.
On Tuesday, the bombshell released by the Icahn, caused a swirl on Wall Street and increased Apple’s stock to nearly five percent higher to close at a seven-month high at $489.57 per share on Nasdaq.
In an interview of Reuters with the billionaire activist, he said that Apple has the ability to make a $150-billion buyback now by scrounging funds at three percent.
Icahn refused to disclose how much his share with Apple, Inc. was, but a source who doesn’t like to be named because Icahn hasn’t revealed his holdings in Apple, yet, said that the investor’s stock was worth around a fraction of the company’s market value of more than $400 billion.
Apple, Inc. folded to Wall Street pressure saying it would give back $1,000 billion to shareholders by the end of the year 2015 – twice the amount aside from the previous. It achieved that state by raising its dividend to 15 percent and enhancing its buyback program to $60 billion.
Icahn, the second famous activist to target Apple this year, tweeted that he had spoken to Tim Cook and they have discussed his opinion about a larger buyback to be done soonest.
Apple, Inc. had forestalled an argument with hedge fund manager David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital, who litigated the makers of Mac computer and iDevices to try blocking a proposal with regards to voting on preferred shares.
In the end, Apple had taken out the proposal. Einhorn’s $8 billion hedge fund, as of the end of the first quarter, is a major shareholder and owned roughly 2.4 million shares of Apple.