Carl Icahn put his money where his mouth has been and spent another half billion dollars on shares of Apple, Inc. The Wall Street raider swooped in on Tuesday after investors punished $AAPL for selling fewer iPhones than expected and for offering flat guidance for the March quarter even though the company just signed up China Mobile and Japan's DoCoMo.
Shares of AAPL opened down more than US$40 lower, as shown in the chart below, and didn't budge much throughout the session, despite all the money that Carl Icahn was pumping into the stock. The stock closed at $506.50, down $44.00 (-7.99 percent), on extraordinarily high volume of 38.1 million shares trading hands, more than two and a half times the current average volume.
AAPL Chart for January 28th, 2014
Source: Yahoo! Finance
Carl Icahn has invested billions of dollars in Apple and has become one of the company's largest shareholders. He has publicly promoted the reality that Apple is undervalued, and has called on management to use its massive cash hoard to dramatically increase share buybacks.
While Apple has spent more than $60 billion buying back shares and paying out one of the largest corporate dividends in history, Mr. Icahn wants Apple to do more, and he is currently sponsoring a shareholder initiative that would require the company to do just that. Apple's management opposes the measure.
On Tuesday, Mr. Icahn tweeted:
Just bought $500 mln more $AAPL shares. My buying seems to be going neck-and-neck with Apple's buyback program, but hope they win that race.
— Carl Icahn (@Carl_C_Icahn) January 28, 2014
Apple's shareholders will vote on the proposal at the company's annual shareholder meeting on February 28th.