Like I said, I think there is a zero percent chance this happens, but I am trying to explain why other people are suggesting.  The piece you seem to be missing is that the value of the company overall goes down during a buyout, it is just that the outstanding shares decrease meaning the value of existing shares go up.<p>If the market cap of Apple is currently $500 billion and they have $200 billion of cash on hand it means the market thinks the company is worth $300 billion.  While spending $200 billion on the buyback will put upward pressure on the price of the stock, offloading that cash will put a downward pressure on the stock.  Since the ratio of cash to market cap is so high for Apple, the stock really wouldn&#x27;t see a huge rise in a buyback.  The end result would be anyone who didn&#x27;t participate in the buyback would now owns a larger piece of a smaller pie.  The assumption is that the &quot;internal&quot; stockholders would be in that group.  The reason it would never happen is because those investors would have to buyout enough people to amass 51% ownership in the company.  That means they would need over $150 billion of the $300 billion post buyout value in cash and stock.