Carl Icahn just can’t help himself.
The billionaire activist investor lobbied Apple earlier this year to buy back billions’ of dollars of its shares to boost value to shareholders. In April, Apple boosted its buyback plans by $30 billion and even split its stock for the first time in nine years. Satisfied? Never. Icahn’s taking another swing at getting Apple to buy back more stock, saying the shares could double to more than $200 apiece.
In a letter Thursday to Tim Cook, the iPhone maker’s CEO, Icahn called on him to throw his weight behind more share repurchases. In return, he promises that he wouldn’t sell back any of his roughly 53 million Apple shares. That represents about 1 percent of Apple’s total 6 billion shares outstanding.
“You have said that the company likes to be ‘opportunistic’ when repurchasing shares, and we appreciate that,” Icahn wrote. “With this letter, we simply hope to express to you that now is a very opportunistic time to do so.”
