[NewsPoster]

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn spoke with Apple CEO Tim Cook today, urging him to increase the company's share buybacks, reports note. The news first emerged from Icahn himself via Twitter; there he revealed not only the conversation, but that his firm has a "large position" in Apple, whose stock he feels is "extremely undervalued." Apple later confirmed the talk in a statement to the Wall Street Journal, but without mentioning Icahn's buyback agenda. Icahn says he plans to speak with Cook again "shortly."

Apple's current dividend and buyback plans are already expected to cost the company $100 billion through 2015. Icahn, though, is known for advocating moves that favor shareholders but not necessarily the interests of the company's owners. He has for example opposed Dell founder Michael Dell's attempts to take his company private again.

Icahn's comments about Apple have already triggered a surge in the company's stock price. Before his Twitter posts, Apple was trading at roughly $475. Shares closed at $489.57 this afternoon, and have surpassed $490 after-hours as of this writing.

[The Vicar]

Share buybacks are essentially a legal means of manipulating stock prices at the company's expense. Apple shouldn't have done ANY stock buybacks, and Icahn should shut his mouth and be glad our government is too far in the pocket of the rich to regulate or tax properly -- if they weren't, he'd be in prison and in debt.

[Birchscott]

"...urging him increase the company's..."

Sigh. Does no one proof read these days?

[nouser]

Apple didn't become one of the most respected and successful companies in the world by playing financial games. No, thet did so by continuously amazing customers with innovative products that most just wanted to own. This is why Steve Jobs' Apple was such a success, while those bean counters who took over Apple for a while would drove the company to near extinction.

It takes vision and passion not stock buybacks and higher dividends. Apple's customers continue to buy Apple products and they don't do that because Apple's stock price is 400, or 700. What bean counters never seem to understand.