“Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn said Thursday that mutual funds will increasingly realize that being underweight shares of Apple will hurt their performance as the technology giant continues to innovate,” Sam Forgione reports for Reuters.
“‘They are underweight Apple in relation to the index funds, and I think more and more of these funds will realize that’s going to hurt their performance in the future as Apple continues to launch new products in new categories and continues to grow earnings,'” Icahn told Reuters,” Forgione reports. “In 2014, funds that underweighted Apple compared with broad market indexes were the most likely to underperform their peers, according to Morningstar.”
“Icahn owned about 53 million Apple shares at the end of the first quarter, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing,” Forgione reports. “Icahn reiterated on Thursday that Apple should increase its share buybacks. Icahn has pushed Apple to boost buybacks since announcing his stake in the company in August 2013. His latest push came after Apple boosted its repurchase program in April to $140 billion from $90 billion announced last year.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: With 53 million shares, unsurprisingly, Icahn is Apple’s head cheerleader.