Now for a closing keynote conversation, an activist icons view on markets and the future. Please welcome Carl Icahn, chairman icon enterprises and interviewer Steven Bertoni, assistant managing editor, founders Forbes.
Alright. Hey everybody. Hey Carl. How you doing? You see me there? Yeah, you look like the Wizard of Oz right now, like the big floating head in front of everybody. So you look good. Yeah. They call me the Wizard of Oz anyway.
Yeah. Yeah. Well thanks for joining us. We have a great room. And so what's on your mind? Let's hear about the title is what does Carl Icahn think of the markets? And let's kick off with that right now.
Yeah. I think we have a real problem with the markets. I've been saying that, Steve. I've been saying that for about a couple of years now, you know, in articles or whatever. I keep things pretty well hedged, but I have a very big hedge on now. I think we have a major problem and I can go into it more if you want me to.
Yeah. Why we do it? Yeah, please. Of course. Give me a few bullets on like what the specifics are that really, you know, get. I mean, look, to begin with, we're trapped with this inflation. Inflation is a terrible thing. It's what brings down in Japanese. And you look at things simplistically. Look at it just very simplistically. That's where if you can do that and sort of understand the markets that way, you should be successful over a long period of time. And right now, they're real problems because inflation is a terrible thing. And once you have it, it's almost like being a drug dependent, you know, and it's very hard to get rid of it once in stock. I mean, I remember the 70s, but it takes out countries. It takes out of Japanese. And I think how is very right to do anything you can to stop this inflation that's coming on. And the real surprising thing is that you haven't had it before because for the last years, we've just printed up money and just giving it out.
And what are the major problems is, I think, and nobody's blamed them, but it's corporate America. It's the CEOs, rubber stamp boards. And the money has been very cheap. So they've been able to borrow money very cheaply. But instead of putting back into production, they've taken that money, borrowed more and more, and bought stocks at very high valuations. And now it's time to pay the price of that. So you'll have more and more debt coming due or interest rates to pay at a higher price. And that is a problem as far as earnings are concerned.
And aside from that, household net worth, I would say median household net worth is really non-existent. In this country. So half the households have no net worth. And the other half, except for the very top 10%, I think are very concerned about what's happening. And they're looking at their net worth, which is the market and their homes. And you have to be very concerned about that.
Carl, eventually. In this kind of high inflation environment, you've been through many decades, ups and downs. How does this environment affect what you do and how you play the game right now?
Well, we're very hedged. And as far as I'm concerned, you know, short the S&P and short different companies. And what I look for are companies that have some hidden jewel. And that's served our purposes. We find a company with hidden jewels and either not well managed or the boards are rubber stamped too much debt or whatever. And we get it on those boards. And eventually, you know, sometimes you have to replace the CEO. And a lot of these companies are doing well. So you take CVI, our refinery. Our refinery, we took years, but it's now actually functioning greatly because we have spent quite a bit of capital in it over the years.
You know, we have to save it for going back up. The government and their great wisdom with ESG made refineries better. And very difficult, very difficult to make a profit. So a large number of small refineries went out of business.
And I will go to details, but they penalize refineries. And they tell them, you know, they don't want them. So unlike almost in any other industry where if you're doing well, you build more, if you do it well in the widget business, you build more widget factories. You can't build another refinery. You take CVI, for instance. You know, do we find refineries we have to replace would be, you know, ten, twelve billion dollars, I believe. I just, you can't put a number on it because you really can't build another one in this country. So you can't have that competitive element coming in. A lot of refineries went out of business. And so a lot of the large refineries for the big companies listed to the government telling you how terrible refineries were and stopped. Stop building them up.
So today, what they call the crack spread has widened tremendously. The diesel crack, for instance, has gone up as high as seventy five or eighty dollars. And that just means it used to be, you know, twenty, twenty five dollars. So obviously, our even as for the three quarters has gone up to eight hundred million dollars, I believe, or close to a billion dollars.
But then you can't really come in and say, well, these refineries, you know, you should pay more taxes or something because in the bad times, I must have put three, four hundred million dollars in to save that refinery or that to refineries. When a lot of refineries went out of business.
So now you're backed into an energy problem for gasoline and diesel. And diesel is very important today. Diesel now is used in Europe to generate electricity, which will stop eventually. And from the point of view, ESG, you have something called bunker fuel that is really, really polluting the water as we speak. So diesel is used to replace that terrible fuel they used.
And then our refinery, Winnie Wood and coffee, the little refiner, we're able to produce fertilizer or help to produce fertilizer. So we don't need with fertilizer, you need ammonia, you need gas to make the ammonia, you know, in a street. You need natural gas except we're the only one in the country. And people don't understand this that built this many years ago. We had the foresight to build it. I can't take credit for it, but it's there.
And we were able to make it with the company called Pete coat, that coat. And so we don't need the natural gas to make the fertilizer. And we ended up owning a fertilizer plant, which is the factory is right next to our refinery. And it's really fascinating. And nobody even wanted that seven, eight years ago, but we nourished it, we kept it going. We owned 36% of it and we own the control of it. And obviously today, fertilizer is the most necessary thing in the world if you think about it, especially if the Ukraine keeps going and they shuttle off these things. And we are the only one in the country that can make it without natural gas.
So we have all these little jewels at CVI. I'm just using one example of what we look for. And they're coming to fruition.
所以我们在CVI有很多这样的小宝贝。我只是以一个例子来说明我们寻找的东西。而且它们正在逐渐实现。
And also speaking of fighting those gems, you just made a play. You bought a big stake of crown holdings. You just bought a big stake of aluminum can company today. Tell me behind like really quick summary, what made you do that move?
Well, there too, you look for a couple of hidden jewels. I mean, it's in an industry that has natural growth because it's in an industry where you're getting rid of slowly, but surely getting rid of plastic containers. So because of the environment again.
And for some reason, the earnings of this company have not come to fruition. The earnings are down. Well, you know, a lot of companies are down, but I think one of the problems that corporations do, and there are many good CEOs and many good boards, but a lot of the problems are that they try to diversify. When they try to say, I'm going to take over a company because I'm, you know, I got this company and you're going to get synergies. And I think that the city is very hard to get. If you look back in history, Jack Welch was good enough to get synergies and GE, but then look what happened. So they went out and bought different companies. We think they should just get rid of it and stick to the canned business.
I think there's a lot of things that you can do in that company. There's not, I mean, they're not badly run, but I think that many of this, but this whole business of diversity, this is diversifying as hurt their earnings, hurt their multiple, and eventually that company should flourish just by the nature of the business area. So stock went down a lot and we bought a fair amount of it. We're going to try to, I talked to the CEO today, we'd like representation on the board as we always try to get. We may get it. We may not. We may have a proxy fight. We may not. We haven't decided yet.
But that's relatively small. We have a lot of companies that are IP. Right now I just mentioned CVI because it sort of typifies what we do over the years to get the record we've had.
Yeah, speaking of record, I want to switch from industry to tech. And I went back nine years and I remember your first tweet you wrote. And that was back when you were in a proxy battle with a small computer company called Dell. This Twitter is great. I like it almost as much as I like Dell.
And now you come full circle because I've been hearing some rumors that, you know, before the Elon Musk move, people were approaching you to maybe launch a proxy battle with Twitter before Musk came in. Is that, are those rumors true?
Yeah, I was approached. I've been approached on different companies. I was approached. I looked at Twitter and I loved it. I think it's a great platform. I think Elon Musk is the perfect one for that company. You don't have to be a genius to realize that he was going to finish that deal. You know, he was up against lawsuits that he wouldn't have won in that in Delaware, my opinion, the Chesapeake court there. And so we bought a lot of stock in it. Well, I bought stock when it went down after when he was, we were thinking of it and then he announced what he was doing. The stock went down. We loaded up with it. I mean, we bought. Costa. I can't remember exactly 15 million shares, which is fair amount to get what it was in the 30s.
And I look at it two ways. I believe that he was going to do the deal. And if you did the deal, that's great. Because I do believe we go to corporate governance now. And one of the major problems in this country, and I keep saying it, not the only COVID problem because you need discipline as far as inflation goes. And we have that real problem. But one of the major problems is there's no corporate governance. I mean, corporate governance in this country is an oxymoron. Corporate democracy is an oxymoron. And there's an article today about a black rock talking about it. And I hope my figure, and I know him, really does something because actually these index funds protect bad CEOs or CEOs that are just there. And you don't have any accountability in corporate America. And in Twitter, I think it's sort of ludicrous. I mean, I'm not going to get into politics, whether or not you should have the right to censor somebody or not. Although I think you really shouldn't censor anybody unless there's a real reason for it. But what's ludicrous is that a couple of people at Twitter who are employees in Twitter, they work for the shareholders, decided they're great wisdom who could go on the platform and who can't. And I think those days are over. That's just ludicrous.
So I just looked at it and felt that I got a lot of calls about it. And so I said to myself, you know, I'm buying stock here. If for some reason, must doesn't do it, we'll probably launch a proxy file. But what happened was, must came in and I said to myself, I said to my guys, I mean, he's the perfect guy for this. And I would obviously have supported anything he did. I think he's, yeah, I don't know him, but I think he's some of the things he says and does, I think, I'm brilliant. I mean, I'm not in Tesla, but I never own Tesla because, you know, to me, it's not my kind of stock. It's just too high a multiple. But so we went in and all that stock. And, you know, we made a lot of money on it. But if I'm happy about that, if there's something exciting to me, I wish I was looking forward to doing a fight on that one. Because it's so outrageous.
In other words, I'll just repeat again. Why, if you want to, if you want to change the restaurants, if you want to see your family gave you a shade of restaurant, and you have a, you have a major domo at the restaurant, would you, would you allow him to say, I don't like that guy. He can't come into the restaurant. And I let that guy come in. And he said, I'm going to fire. I mean, so that, to me, it just was a ludicrous situation. And I'm not deciding here or discussing the political aspects of whether or not you should have censorship. But I do believe that there is freedom of speech, which is extremely important. And yeah, there should be some censorship in certain cases. But it shouldn't be up to the employee of the company, whether he's called CEO or whatever he's called, to decide, I don't like that guy's politics. I'm not letting him on. So I was, I was ready to get outraged and get into it. But what the heck? I would be glad we made all the money we made on it. Yeah.
How much, how much you make on that trade? Well, I can tell you it's public anyway. We made about a quarter of a billion, 250, 200 million, maybe 250. And, but we have a big portfolio in IEP. IEP this year is doing very well because, you know, I've been smart or lucky in short, I show up positions, I work it out and law positions are sort of working out. So the net asset value of IEP has gone up over so far for the nine months over a billion. So every year we try to keep ourselves long and short and look for those little jewels. And that's, that's what we do over there. And, and, yeah.
I got to ask with Twitter, I mean, you were, you bought a lot of stock and then you kept on buying and, you know, when Musk was going back and forth, will he bivly not, you know, the media was, you know, there was a lot of people thought it would go through. A lot of people thought it wouldn't go through. It seemed like almost like coin toss, but you were confident the whole way. I'd love to get into your kind of your thinking there where it's like, I'm going to buy and keep on buying and you just, your gut said that it was going to go through. Is it you've been, you've seen this so many times or?
Yeah, yeah. I've done the same subject. I think that the company itself is a great platform for this country, a great platform. And you look around at some of the technology companies in that same area. I don't think they're that well run. So here, so I look at it. Just, I think Musk is a little, I've seen what he's done. He's a perfect guy to run it. He's a brilliant guy and all of that. So I figured he's going to do it. It's perfect there. And all this bull that he didn't have the money to do it is nonsense. If you look at his networking, look at his balance sheet and you look at all the stock he's got, I mean, that was just completely nonsense. So in my mind anyway, and in my mind though, throughout this whole thing, he did pay a little too much for it, but not as bad as people say. I really think that that company because of what it stands for, you know, is worth in the low 30s maybe. So maybe he did pay a little more, you know, today, but so maybe he paid a little more. But that's a sort of a rounding error for the guy. And so I figured, you know, this is, he's going to do it. But even, but if he didn't, I was definitely going to launch a proxy site. Well, not definitely, but close to. I mean, it wasn't, you have it. And I would have asked him to be on the board or be, uh, it would be chairman or something. Yeah. Who would be your CEO Twitter if it wasn't, you know, isn't Elon. They didn't call me because it's not my kind of thing. But if he had called me, I would have put a little bit of a little bit of a hit in that, you know, with him because I think he's going to do real well with it. But I would have, I probably would have wanted to prefer to something, you know, but, but nobody would have called me. And I'm glad they didn't. So that's basically that one.
And you mentioned, you know, you're put, you know, you always have longs and shorts. Always hedged. Could you give us one, give us a new long position and a new short position? Or what would you pick right now? What do you, what are you looking at?
Well, if you, I told you, like, to me, I really, um, because about it, you know, I'm not going to do it. Because about, you know, I have positions here. It's difficult for me to buy any more of it, but we own so much of it. The CVI, I think it's going to be. Do there's things at CVI like that, like the stuff that we're going to be doing in the fertilized business, for instance. I mean, so that's a good one. There are other ones I can't talk about at all because, you know, the earnings are now and whatever that I think are cheap. I think Crown, I think Crown Company is really cheap in the sense that it's in an industry that is not going to be affected that badly. In my opinion, I mean, short term, nobody could talk about it. But long term, it's not going to be affected that badly in a recession and a fact it's growing. So you have a company that's growing and it's hard to compete with that one too because, you know, you can't just go and build a can company. You have to be in an area because, you know, when you ship these cans, you have a problem of paying for shipping because, you know, can't take up a lot of space. So you have to be pretty near a large user of those cans. So it's hard to break in it. So it's barriers of interest, natural barriers of interest, which I like. And so you just look for that Colonel and then the other little thing is sort of the thing. I think that's going to be down the road, I think, but I think they should stick to their business. That's what I think could not be diversifying all over.
Sorry, we're almost at a time and this has been a big day. We talked a lot about a lot of scary things on the horizon, things to be worried about, whether it's geopolitical, whether it's inflation, stock market. You've been shaking things up for decades. You've seen it all. You've heard it all because you share any wisdom or advice to the room before we go have a cocktail. It could be about life. It could be about investing. It could be about running a company. What do you got?
Well, I would just say that it's really funny. When I was in college, as a freshman, and I didn't know much about the market at all, I was always a little intrigued by it, I went out and just was thinking back on this. It really happened. I was basically, I got it to Princeton and I came from middle class background from a sort of bad high school. But I made friends with a couple of the wealthier guys and as a freshman.
One of them invited me to dinner with his father. His father came up to see him. His father was a big deal on Wall Street. He sort of very well thought of, really very respected. We were sitting there and he looked at me and he said, you have some promise business because I asked him a couple of questions about Wall Street a little bit. He says, one thing I'm going to give you, one bit of advice. Just remember this. Remember this kid. He was a nice guy. Remember this kid. If you ever get into Wall Street and this business, follow one rule. And I'm not joking. Just what he said. Never fight the Fed. And that's what I've learned that. So I will tell them my advice is this Fed and Powell, I listened to him.
And he's a serious guy and he's going to be, there's none of this stuff. All these guys are saying, oh, they're going to pivot. They should pivot in this and that. And you know, these guys that tell you that are the guy, a lot of them are telling you that because they put all these people into these companies that are overpriced. And there are many good companies now, but many overpriced ones. And I am happy that Powell really means business. And I really think he does before. So you must get rid of this inflation. And that's the worst thing an economy can have. And I think he means business. And I really respected him for coming out and saying it. And I hope I'm right. And I think it's going to be, look, I've said it a few times. I think it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better, perhaps. But all these people that are telling you, you should pivot. You know what it is? It's like telling a drug addict.
Let's say your kids are drug addict and telling him, okay, you took enough, you know, you stopped tricking enough now. Okay, go out at good time again. Well, you can't do that, right? You have to get rid of the guy there, problem you got. And that's what we need to do here. And don't fool yourself. There's going to be a lot more headaches, I think, before we get out of this mess we're in because you can't have the Fed, even if they want to. Over the last 20 or 30 years, they were able to, the Fed was able to come in and save you and save the market. And they go into this tape and tape and tape and tape. But they can't do it now because right now, even if they wanted to, you can't keep printing on money because it's going to just throw gasoline on the flames of inflation. So I think this is what you got to understand.
However, there's some very good companies out there. And, you know, if you're willing to buy them and, you know, have the patience, yeah, I think you'll look back at five years or something, the lesson for you and see that they were great buys. But right now, I think they're very far and few between.
Well, this is great, Carl. Thank you for the advice. You said don't fight the Fed. I'm going to add another rule to that. I think everyone can agree is you also don't want to ever fight Carl Icahn either in a proxy battle. We could add that. But, you know, thank for being here again. For decades, you've changed finance, you've changed business. I think, you know, I have no sense. The year 2000, until now, 22 years, you've had an annualized return of 15% every year, which blows everything else out of the water. You know, we really appreciate you being here. And I'm honored on behalf of Forbes to give you our first ever iconic last award right here. Can you see it? We should call it the iconic last, the iconic last award in your honor.
So you said you had a cocktail? You said you're making a martini. You have a martini there? Here in the house? Yeah, you said you're going to have a martini for the award. You have a martini there? Well, a little later. I usually play tennis for an hour now and then have it an hour. So you do it now and I'll do it about an hour. Actually, maybe sooner. That sounds good. Well, thank you very much, Carl. Appreciate it. All right. Thanks. Great job.