Activist investor urges action on Apple’s stock price

In a long letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook published on Icahn’s Yahoo Finance Contributors Network Tumblr page, the often coarse but sometimes cuddly activist investor Carl Icahn argues that Apple is undervalued. Ichan laid out a very optimistic outlook for Apple’s new-product sales and profit growth far brighter than Wall Street’s current expectations. He believes Apple stock is worth more than double its current value. And he’s urging Cook to accelerate the already-rapid buyback pace to use excess cash for the benefit of long-term shareholders. Icahn currently owns 53 million shares in Apple or less than 1% of the firm and vowed he would not sell his shares if Apple did undertake a buyback.

We ask you to present to the rest of the Board our request for the company to make a tender offer, which would meaningfully accelerate and increase the magnitude of share repurchases.

Carl Icahn

Apple from early 2013 through June had already bought back a whopping $51 billion in stock, with a plan for that to get up to $90 billion by the end of calendar 2015. Icahn doesn’t specify an amount of additional repurchases he’d like to see accomplished through the tender offer he’s proposing.

Business @Carl_C_Icahn