Apple's (AAPL 0.27%) latest earnings release might be disappointing to investors, but there's one particular shareholder who won't be pleased. Carl Icahn has been pushing Apple to implement a share repurchase program in excess of $50 billion for this fiscal year, but the company just disclosed that it repurchased $5 billion of stock in the fiscal first quarter. That's just a tenth of the repurchase activity that Icahn wants.
Last fiscal year, Apple repurchased nearly $23 billion in stock, of which $12 billion came from an accelerated repurchase program. At current levels, Apple is on track to repurchase $20 billion worth of shares this fiscal year. However, if the earnings figures cause Apple to begin trending lower, the board could be opportunistic and boost repurchase activity in the coming weeks -- which would be even more accretive to current shareholders.
In the following video, Evan Niu discusses Apple's latest buyback activity with Ashraf Eassa.
