[gizmo]

Cash isn't included in the enterprise value, you're thinking of the market cap. A company can simply do stock buybacks until it owns all the outstanding stock itself. It's like an IPO but in reverse. During an IPO a company sells equity and gets cash. During a buyback a company buys equity and pays cash.

If you still believe this is impossible, think what would happen if a company on the day of the IPO decided to immediately and unilaterally reverse every transaction. Everybody would get their money back, and the company would simply get its equity back. It's as if the IPO never happened. Clearly not an impossibility. The only difference here is that because some time passed the investors want some extra return on their investment. That's not an insurmountable problem because Apple is rich.

[dpark]

> If you still believe this is impossible, think what would happen if a company on the day of the IPO decided to immediately and unilaterally reverse every transaction.

Yeah, this isn't a thing the company can do. The board cannot "unilaterally" take shareholders' shares and give them money in return. They can initiate a buyback, but that means buying shares on the open market, and they'd still be a public company even if everyone sold back their shares. Or they can propose a buyout, but that requires a shareholder vote and typically external money.

The first scenario still results in a public company, just with fewer shares. Neither scenario results in the company owning itself.

[icebraining]

But when the IPO happens, some shares are already owned by investors (founders, VCs, etc). If you reversed the IPO, the company would still not "own itself", it would be owned by them.