Apple said to take $14B bite of stock via buyback
NEW YORK - Apple (AAPL) has reportedly repurchased $14 billion of its stock in the two weeks after its first-quarter financial results and second-quarter revenue outlook disappointed investors.
Its shares rose almost 2 percent in
premarket trading Friday.
Late Thursday, The Wall Street Journal
reported that Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook said that the company was
"surprised" when its stock dropped 8 percent the day after its
earnings report and revenue outlook. He told the newspaper he wanted to be
"aggressive" and "opportunistic."
An Apple representative didn't
immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Apple has grown accustomed to being a
leader in the technology sector. In the Steve Jobs era, consumers and investors
alike eagerly awaited each new product announcement and have been rewarded as
devices like the iPhone and iPad won accolades for innovation and pushing
technology forward.
But with each new innovation over the
years, there have been increasingly higher expectations for the future. So when
Apple's first-quarter iPad and iPhone sales were not as big as expected by
investors, and its second-quarter revenue forecast fell short of Wall Street's
view, the stock got dinged.
In past year Apple's shares have
started losing some ground due to concerns about slowing growth and increasing
competition.
And with the smartphone market
becoming inundated with options, Apple may be hard pressed to lift its stock
back to where it stood at its peak price of more than $700 in September 2012.
That was before investors began to fret about fiercer competition in mobile
devices and Apple's lack of a breakthrough product since the iPad came out
nearly four years ago.
But Apple isn't sitting idle. Its
reported stock buybacks signals the company remains confident in its business.
This is good news for investors, including Carl Icahn. The billionaire activist
investor has been pressuring Apple to boost its stock buybacks. Just last month
Icahn raised his stake in Apple, revealing on Twitter that he'd put another
$500 million into Apple stock. He already owned about 4.7 million Apple Inc.
shares worth more than $2.5 billion.
While Apple reportedly repurchased $14
billion of its stock in two weeks, Icahn has said he wants the Cupertino,
California, company to spend $50 billion buying back its own stock during the
current fiscal year ending in September.
Cook told the Journal that Apple has
repurchased more than $40 billion of its shares in the last 12 months.
The company's stock added $8.66, or 1.7 percent, to $521.17 in premarket trading about 90 minutes before the market open.
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