Carl Icahn on Wednesday confirmed through a tweet that he bought $500 million worth of additional Apple stocks in the last two weeks bringing his total investment in the iPhone maker to over $3 billion.
Icahn tweeted, “Having purchased $500 million more $AAPL shares in the last two weeks, our investment has crossed the $3 billion mark yesterday”.
“Since tweeting about our large position in $AAPL on Aug 13, when the stock was 468 per share, we’ve kept buying shares of this ‘no brainer’”, he said in another tweet.
Icahn’s latest investment did not stop him from continuing to curse the company saying that the company’s board of directors “is doing great disservice to shareholders by not having markedly increased its buyback”.
Icahn has been repeatedly urged Apple to buy back an additional $150 billion of its own stock and return more cash to shareholders.
Apple in May announced a plan to return $100 billion to shareholders over the next three years, through a combination of stock buybacks and a quarterly dividend of $3.05 per share. However, Tim Cook, Apple CEO, completely rejected Icahn’s plan of asking Apple to pay $147 billion cash hoard to shareholders.
Icahn on Wednesday promised to write an in-depth letter in a day or two, laying out his arguments to investors. He also said that he will go on asking support from fellow shareholders for his buyback proposal.
Icahn isn’t the only investor to push Apple for a stock buyback. David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital In February 2013 publicly accused the company of “hoarding” billions in cash.
