Carl Icahn finally got his dinner date wish with Tim Cook last night, after the famous billionaire investor took to Twitter a few weeks ago to preach how Wall Street has seriously undervalued AAPL stock. Along with parading his optimism for Apple’s stock, Icahn purchased a major stake in AAPL stock and has been dying for Cupertino to issue more buybacks.
Had a cordial dinner with Tim last night. We pushed hard for a 150 billion buyback. We decided to continue dialogue in about three weeks.
— Carl Icahn (@Carl_C_Icahn) October 1, 2013
Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer were both present at the dinner last night according Icahn who appeared on CNBC this morning to discuss his investments. Icahn says he told Cook, “My argument is, if you think it’s undervalued, you have $150 billion sitting in Europe … why not go out and borrow $150 billion?”
Talks between the two “got a little testy” according to Icahn who pushed for Apple to do a major buyback, even though Oppenheimer mentioned Apple’s board of directors disagrees, to which Icahn replied that the board “isn’t God.”
With over $2 billion worth of AAPL stock, Icahn has been pushing for Apple to reward shareholders with a buyback, and while he says that Tim Cook was very cordial during the dinner, he can’t promise Apple will actually do the buyback, but he’s not going away without more of a fight.
Icahn in closing: "It's almost an absurdity not to do it … I'm hoping they'll see the light, so to speak." $AAPL
— Julianne Pepitone (@julpepitone) October 1, 2013