Carl Icahn Says Apple Is Massively Undervalued

Carl Icahn Says Apple Is Massively Undervalued(wired.com)

15 points by cyphersanctus 11 years ago | 18 comments

npalli 11 years ago |

Michael Dell after his experience with Carl Icahn [1] and the bitter battle to take his company private.

“It’s a big poker game to him [Carl Icahn],” says Dell. “It’s not about the customers. It’s not about the people. It’s not about changing the world. He doesn’t give a crap about any of that. He didn’t know whether we made nuclear power plants or French fries. He didn’t care.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/connieguglielmo/2013/10/30/you-w...

sgnelson 11 years ago |

You should read this as "Carl Icahn wants to pump and dump Apple Stock."

untothebreach 11 years ago | |

FWIW, he does claim that he won't do that.

Depends on how trustworthy he is, though.

guyzero 11 years ago | | |

He's going to pump now and will dump later at his leisure.

salimmadjd 11 years ago |

You should read how Icahn destroyed TWA [1] before believing a word he says.

[1] http://blog.pmarca.com/2014/03/18/when-carl-icahn-ran-a-comp...

fleitz 11 years ago |

Carl: Hmm... I think I should sell my apple shares... but who would buy them all...?

Carl: I know, I'll get apple to buy my shares!

metaphorm 11 years ago |

he's so full of it. he wants a stock buyback program to boost his own shares valuation. that's all. this guy is a scam artist.

andrewrice 11 years ago |

He's expressed this sentiment before, and has been pressing Apple to expand its stock buyback program since he first invested in the company. See this 2013 article from Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-13/carl-icahn-disclose...

lotsofmangos 11 years ago |

promising that if Apple heeds his advice, he won’t sell off any of his approximately 53 million shares.

If he really thinks the stock is undervalued, why would he sell in the absence of a share buyback anyway? If he is right then surely he should be buying those shares himself and waiting as the buyback would only be bringing forward a rise, not creating it.

nly 11 years ago | |

It's a good point, but investing more than a certain % of your assets (roughly proportional to your perceived edge) in any one thing, is a bad idea.

chollida1 11 years ago |

I think this is a much better url as it has the actual letter that the article is based on.

http://www.businessinsider.com/carl-icahn-apple-letter-2014-...

To be fair to him, he's not the only person who thinks apple should be doing more with their cash:

http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/11/21/hedge-fund-manager...

I'm sure most people have heard about Icahn. But if not check out his Wikipedia page to see a list of investments he's gone activist on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Icahn

The guy is an interesting man. His most recent endeavor was to prop up the company herbalife. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-22/icahn-makes-234-mil...

He sure isn't the kind of hedge fund manager that sits behind a desk and stares at his Bloomberg terminal all day:)

The man is 78, and worth 23 billion and he's still picking fights, I hope I have that kind of energy when I get that old, maybe not the fight picking part:)

EDIT to be clear, I'm not making a judgement on his character or if he's a net positive to the market. You may see him as good or bad.

pothibo 11 years ago | |

From what I read from him, I can only feel that he's one of the example of what's wrong with capitalism. He only serves himself (Pump & dump, Herbalife, etc.)

He's been a cancer to any company that he's invested in. Check the Family Dollar history. Force owner to sell, then when a serious offer shows up, he sells his share before the deal is closed.

JetSpiegel 11 years ago | |

> to be clear, I'm not making a judgement on his character or if he's a net positive to the market.

I am. Herbalife is a Ponzi scheme.

q2 11 years ago |

I wonder if Tim Cook really reads that lengthy letter or some legal expert will just summarize the content. TL;DR version might be helpful.

cpwright 11 years ago | |

I would be surprised if Cook did not read it. Its not that lengthy, and Icahn does own just a bit under 1% of the company, if I did my math right(53M shares * 100.98 / 596B market cap).

JohnTHaller 11 years ago | | |

Cook should read it and then do the opposite of whatever Icahn wants given Icahn's track record of wrecking companies.

wil421 11 years ago |

Maybe he can schedule a takeover then start selling off their assets. Then move to take the company private again.

anonbanker 11 years ago |

I might be in the minority here, but I want to see Icahn pump-and-dump Apple. Now that Jobs is gone, there is nobody running the ship that is competent enough to stop Icahn. He'll devalue the company, and bleed it dry if allowed, just like he's trying to do with eBay right now. And this makes me happy as a clam; Now that Microsoft is steadily marching toward irrelevance, it'd be peachy keen if we could take down the usurper to that throne (Apple), and give the GNU/Linux and BSD families the attention they rightfully deserve.

Could you imagine? if Icahn bled Apple to death, Ubuntu would be the 800lb Gorilla.