Opinions
Christine Poole
Abbott Labs
ABT-N
COMMENT
May 18, 2016
Stock price when the opinion was issued
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It reports Wednesday. They will report on their strong franchises and their baby formula lawsuit which would have hurt their valuation for a long time. Not long ago, this was 14 points higher during that brutal, ridiculous rotation. These stocks are now all the way down.
In general, he's had almost no healthcare exposure for the last year. Relative price performance for the group has been weak. That said, he's seeing some improvement around the edges.
He always looks for what's held up better than the rest, and this name would fit. Performed better than 78% of S&P stocks over the last 52 weeks. Technically, made a series of higher lows. More of its earnings estimates have moved higher than lower, so earnings momentum revision is decent. Hasn't technically broken out, so he's not there yet. If you own it, hold.
Emerging markets represents about 40% of their earnings. Have a very strong branded generic division and a lot of that is in the emerging-market, so currency has been a huge head wind for them. Also, have a leading adult and infant nutritional business as well as medical devices. There was some concern that the medical device area was not growing as fast as some of their other businesses. Management is quite competent they can get things improving.