Right, but he totally missed that IEP sold a significant number of new shares while paying a high dividend. These cancel each other out. There were plenty of red flags. 5-year average earnings yield is -3.85%. 5-year average free cash flow is negative. Revenues are down from $19B in 2013 to $14B in 2022. I think "maybe buy a little for the dividend" was bad advice ("Should you invest? I don't know... Perhaps you take a small position in Icahn Enterprises to collect the 15% dividend yield." at time 16:00 in the podcast).

Looking at S&P1500 equal weight screens since 1991, the best CAGR was with both lower Total Shareholder Equity and lower Shares Outstanding compared to 9 years earlier. The worst CAGR was lower Equity and higher Shares. Increased Equity (1229 out of 1393) and increased Shares (998 out of 1229) was the most common.

         Screen           CAGR  GSD  MDD  Sharpe  Depth
EquityDownSharesDown2023  13.5  22   -65   0.63    103
     SharesDown2023       12.3  20   -59   0.61    397
     EquityDown2023       12.0  24   -69   0.53    166
 EquityUpSharesDown2023   11.7  19   -58   0.59    294
    SP1500EqualWeight     11.5  22   -60   0.54   1393
      EquityUp2023        11.3  21   -59   0.54   1229
  EquityUpSharesUp2023    11.0  22   -60   0.51    935
      SharesUp2023        10.9  23   -61   0.51    998
 EquityDownSharesUp2023   8.1   30   -75   0.34     63

From 19910524 To 20230310
gtr1.net: GTR1 Backtester - SP1500EqualWeight
gtr1.net: GTR1 Backtester - EquityUpSharesUp2023
gtr1.net: GTR1 Backtester - EquityUpSharesDown2023
gtr1.net: GTR1 Backtester - EquityDownSharesDown2023
https://gtr1.net/2013/?~EquityDownSharesUp2023:h63...
https://gtr1.net/2013/?~SharesUp2023:h63f0.4::pref...
https://gtr1.net/2013/?~EquityDown2023:h63f0.4::pr...
https://gtr1.net/2013/?~SharesDown2023:h63f0.4::pr...
https://gtr1.net/2013/?~EquityUp2023:h63f0.4::pref...

"Though total shareholder yield might be something that does in fact work, it makes no economic sense. Buybacks don't increase the value of a stock... By seeking high numbers for the sum of divdends, buybacks, and [optionally] debt reduction, I suspect what the screen is really doing is finding firms that are generating more cash than they can profitably invest in growing the business. The only sensible things one can do in that situation is to pay out the surplus cash as dividends, pay down debt, or buy back shares. Since you're picking firms with "too much cash", it would not be a shocker that the screen beats a random selection of companies."
http://www.datahelper.com/mi/search.phtml?nofool=y...