An educated guess is that Apple was not able to repurchase 5% of its shares from January 2013 to January 2014. By some estimates, Apple needs a shares outstanding count of 893 million or less to qualify for admission to the NASDAQ US BuyBack Achievers Index. The company currently has just under 892 million shares outstanding.
PKW rebalances next in April, so it may be just a short time before the ETF has some Apple in its portfolio. Of course, Apple does not need to be in another ETF. It already dominates plenty. [Of Google and ETFs]
Those wanting Apple to join PKW should be careful what they wish. Shares of Apple are up 10.5% in the past two years, a fraction of the 47.1% gained by PKW.
PowerShares Buyback Achievers Portfolio
Tom Lydon’s clients own shares of Apple.