Activist investor Carl Icahn has known to… ahem… talk his book. He’s been known to talk it quite loudly in fact. If “scream your book” was an expression, that would be an accurate description of what Carl Icahn does.
So, we should probably take Mr. Icahn’s public love affair with Apple (AAPL) with a large grain of salt. Apple stock is, after all, his largest non-controlled holding, representing more than 21% of his portfolio.
Apple stock is down nearly 20% from its 52-week high, and at one point during last week’s market pandemonium it was down over 30% from its 52-week high. So, with AAPL pretty roughed up in recent weeks and trading near $110 per share, I wanted to revisit some of the claims made by Carl Icahn back in May.
Icahn said that Apple is worth over $240 per share. But a lot has changed in the past four months. China’s market bubble turned into a major bust, and the U.S. market entered official correction territory. But if Icahn is accurate, then investors buying Apple stock today should be looking at returns of nearly 120% in short order.
In his letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, Icahn wrote.
To arrive at the value of $240 per share, we forecast FY2016 EPS of $12.00 (excluding net interest income), apply a P/E multiple of 18x, and then add $24.44 of net cash per share. Considering our forecast for 30% EPS growth in FY 2017 and our belief Apple will soon enter two new markets (Television and the Automobile) with a combined addressable market size of $2.2 trillion, we think a multiple of 18x is a very conservative premium to that of the overall market.
Valuation is Absurdly Cheap
Let’s pick these numbers apart. Earnings forecasting site Estimize, which has an outstanding track record at forecasting company earnings, pegs AAPL’s 2016 earnings per share lower, at $9.54. So Icahn might be a little aggressive in his estimates. But still, even at the lower Estimize estimate, Apple stock trades for a very modest forward P/E of 11.5.
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