Yesterday, investor Carl Icahn tweeted a promise to post an open letter to Tim Cook. Today, he posted that letter.

The letter is long, so follow the link if you want to read the whole thing. At the heart of the matter, Icahn is asking Tim Cook to buy back more shares:

Described in more detail below, these factors combine to reflect a massive undervaluation of Apple in today’s market, which we believe will not last for long. Therefore, given the persistently excessive liquidity of $133 billion net cash on Apple’s balance sheet, we ask you to present to the rest of the Board our request for the company to make a tender offer, which would meaningfully accelerate and increase the magnitude of share repurchases.

Icahn owns 53 million shares of stock. He offers this statement to diffuse any cynicism:

To preemptively diffuse any cynical criticism that you may encounter with respect to our request, which might claim that we are requesting a tender offer with the intention of tendering our own shares, we hereby commit not to tender any of our shares if the company consummates any form of a tender offer at any price. We commit to this because we believe Apple remains dramatically undervalued.

This does not diffuse my cynicism. This strikes me as a simple push to build demand for the stock and increasing the value of his holdings. Not a new strategy for Icahn.