In an open letter to Tim Cook, billionaire investor Carl Icahn says Apple’s stock is still incredibly undervalued, and that now is the time for a much larger stock buyback.
Icahn’s firm believes that Apple shares are really worth $240 today, despite trading around $130.26 this morning, an increase over his previous estimate of $216. According to his letter, Icahn believes Apple is poised to dominate two new markets – television and the automobile.
“After reflecting upon Apple’s tremendous success, we now believe Apple shares are worth $240 today. Apple is poised to enter and in our view dominate two new categories (the television next year and the automobile by 2020) with a combined addressable market of $2.2 trillion, a view investors don’t appear to factor into their valuation at all.”
Along with dropping info on what he believes Apple shares are worth, Icahn says he thinks Apple is preparing to introduce an “Ultra High Definition television set” as well as a 12.9 inch iPad that would act as an improved “second screen” to the Apple UltraHD TV.
Noting Apple’s predilection for secrecy, Icahn points to the company’s aggressive increases in R&D spending as a sign that Apple is about to enter the television and automotive markets with new products. Rumors of an Apple TV set release have been floating around the Apple rumor mill for years but Apple has focused solely on the Apple TV console.
Icahn expects Apple to sell a 55-inch and 65-inch UltraHD TV starting in 2016, with revenues reaching $15 billion the first year, and then $37.5 billion by 2017, with an average selling price of $1,500. Apple is expected to unveil a new Apple TV set top box at WWDC, but after years of dubious rumors, we doubt we’ll see an actual TV set anytime soon.
Source: Carl Icahn
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
5 responses to “Carl Icahn thinks Apple is about to launch an UltraHD TV”
I don’t know how successful Apple is going to be at UHD because it’s predicated on how much content they can get access to. 4K TV’s are a small percentage of the install base when compared to 720p or even 1080p.
Sony has a lot of content, but they obviously are keeping much of that for themselves.
How much content does even NetFlix have? Very little.
They just started to spit out native 4K BluRay and there simply aren’t that many titles averrable in Native 4K.
I personally give 4K another 5 to maybe even 10 more years for 4K to be that relevant in the home. They have to get 4K TVs to start replacing aging 720p and 1080p TVs that are already in people’s homes. They still have yet to broadcast in 4K in many markets.
I think 4K is just too early to make any major difference in Apple’s bottom line.
These are US television sizes. The rest of the world is not so obsessed with size, with most screens between 26 and 40 inch. It’s unlikely that Apple would sell larger screens only.
Everything this man says has the single property of being a manipulation for the purpose of increasing his own bank value. Be his statement a lie, rumor or actual fact disguised as a truth, his words are not to be trusted.
Yeah anyone listening to people like Icahn are idiots. It also shows how stupid the whole stock market system is. Icahn send one tweet and Apples values goes op 90 million dollars. It’s all air and speculation. The really stupid part is that for some reason companies pay huge attention to their totally meaningless secondhand market stock price, which is in no real way linked to their own finances. The company already got it’s money in IPO, so CEO’s chasing stock prices is stupid. Of course the real reason CEO’s chase stocks is pure self interest based on stock bonus packages. Which they usually do to the detriment of the company’s longer term viability.
The only long term viable companies anymore are family owned private businesses, because they have the capability to do stable long term planning. Everyone else is at the mercy of quarterly idiotisism.
Carl Icahn would immediately rip apart and sell Apple asset by asset, if he could. He is not interested in anything, but quick profits to himself as fast as possible. Nobody should be listening to these self admitted vulture capitalists. They are not even good for capitalism. Only reason anyone does listen is that Icahn has earned Billions by literally destroying companies. And he thinks it is something to be proud about.
“Carl Icahn thinks Apple is about to launch an UltraHD TV”
Carl Ichan… is wrong.