John Burke Amgen Inc. AMGN-Q HOLD Oct 26, 2017

Trades at a healthy 15x earnings and 66% gross margin (56% in the sector). It pays a 3% dividend. They just bought Horizon Therapeutics which adds growth. Their early-stage obesity drug shows great promise in a $100 billion potential market.

He prefers Amgen, because their weight-loss drug is under trial and not priced into the stock yet. And it trades at a lower PE than these peers.

They just bought Horizon Therapeutics, a growth engine, and have a weight-loss drug in phase 2 trials that is promising facing a huge market. They trade at a decent PE and enjoy good growth from their core drugs.

Today's downgraded doesn't bother him. These calls go back and forth often. Their weight-loss drug could add $10 billion revenues. A good time to own this.

He still believes in their key drug, Repatha. His concern lies with their weight-loss drug and their disappointing results.

A dividend play for 2025 at 3.65%. Not sexy, but consistently generates earnings, free cash flow, and each year grows its dividend. Offers growth wealth generation over time.

Diversity is good in the bio pharma space. It is a fully diversified large cap and he would have it as a core holding.

Phase 2 drug in the GLP-1 space -- not as mature as LLY's drug, but you don't pay as much for this company either. Trades ~14x earnings, compared to 50x for LLY. And that's more his style of investing.