Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, recently increased his stake in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) by buying 2.8 million shares worth $1.65 billion.Icahn at present has more than 7.5 million shares in Apple. This was revealed on Thursday in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing as reported by The Wall Street Journal.
On Thursday, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s stock declined to $588.82, which indicates that Icahn hold stake worth over $4.4 billion in the company.
Icahn’s approves Apple plans
Icahn’s purchase of shares indicates that he approves the decisions taken by Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s board. Last August, Icahn tweeted about the strong position he held in Apple’s, and about his meeting with Tim Cook, the CEO of the company, where he informed that he discussed the buyback of a larger stock that would eventually lead to higher earnings. Icahn owned Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock worth $1.5 billion at that time.
In the following next months, Icahn pressurized the management for prospective stock buyback, and went so as to file a shareholder proxy vote regarding the matter.
Once Icahn purchased additional shares and the company announced its share repurchase program, the activist investor gave up on his efforts that he was making aggressively, and said that since the company was very close to reaching the target it had proposed for itself, no more further actions were needed.
Got what he wanted
In March, the billionaire investor acquired the stocks just before Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) announced its share repurchase program and a split of 7-to-1 recently. Previously, the company announced a buyback authorization of $60 billion and has been increased to $90 billion, now. On June 2 the stock split will take place and on June 9 split adjusted trading will commence.  The quarterly cash dividend offered by Apple’s board was $3.05 per share, and now they have raised this by 8% to $3.29 per share.
The iPhone maker now expects that it would be able to return to its shareholders around $130 billion by the end of 2015, which is short of $150 billion buyback that Icahn was looking forward to. Icahn had invested around $3.7 billion since last summer in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), and it is expected that it earned him a return of 19% making it grow by $700 million.
