Search results for Pfizer
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Posted
Sep 30 2009, 03:14 PM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This article is written by Minyanville's Josh Lipton For all the tough talk heading into the month, September didn’t prove so scary after all.
Stock pickers can’t be blamed for thinking these past few weeks were going to scratch up their portfolios. After all, historically, the market does pretty poorly as fall kicks off. The average price change for September, going back to 1929, is a decline of 1.2%. The market has typically fallen 56% of the time in September.
However, through Tuesday’s close, the S&P 500 was up 3.9% for the month. For the quarter, we’re up 15.4%.
Let’s put that in historical perspective, friends: That's the 17th best gain of all quarters since 1929, and 5th best of all third quarters. For more near future predictions, see Four Scenarios for the Fourth Quarter.
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Posted
Sep 04 2009, 02:24 PM
by
John Reese
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
The investing world is often littered with new theories and new ideas about how best to make money. But over the years, I've found that the best way to produce solid, market-beating returns is to take advantage of the wisdom history's best investors have been kind enough to share. That's why I created my Guru Strategy computer models, and that's why each week I recap what some of the gurus I follow are saying about the market and economy.
This week the theme seemed to be that, while the economic future remains cloudy, it's a good environment for stock-pickers. That's what Mario Gabelli, a Benjamin Graham disciple with an excellent long-term track record, told Bloomberg. While ETFs or sector plays have become all the rage lately, Gabelli says he's focusing on individual stocks that have strong potential for the next three or four years. He gave his thoughts on potential plays in the financial, airline, newspaper, and telecom industries, and also said the food industry is ripe for a round of mergers.
Another top manager, Donald Yacktman, whose two funds are up about 9% per year over the past decade while the S&P 500 has been in the red, says he's focusing on high-quality stocks. Lower-quality firms have made big gains in the rebound, but the best buys now are plays like Coca-Cola (KO), Pepsi (PEP), and Procter & Gamble (PG), Yacktman, a bottom-up stock-picker, told Bloomberg. He says financials are still dangerous, but that he's found a great play in AmeriCredit (ACF).
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Posted
Jul 15 2009, 11:56 AM
by
Catherine Holahan
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 As strapped consumers look for ways to save, they are increasingly turning to generic products. Savvy investors still have time to add generic manufacturers to their portfolios and profit from the downturn.
The desire for generics over name-brand drugs was evident in recent earnings reports from pharmaceutical giants and consumer products companies. This week, Johnson & Johnson, which manufactures products as varies as Neutrogena skin care products and brand name birth control pills, said sales dropped 7.4% in second quarter to $15.2 billion. Company executives attributed the decline largely to competition from generic drug makers, who sell alternatives to J&J's leading drugs, such as anti-psychotic Risperdal.
"Our pharmaceutical business saw the continued impact of generic competition," said Dominic Caruso, J&J's chief financial officer, during the company's July 14 earnings call.
Generic drugs had a similarly negative impact on Abbott Laboratories. The Chicago-based drug-maker said today that its prescription drugs sales fell 4.3% to $3.95 billion due in part to generic competition for anti-depressant Depakote.
Meanwhile, smaller generic drug developers saw their sales soar this quarter. Hi-Tech Pharmacal, a generic drug manufacturer based in Amityville, N.Y., said July 14 that its sales rose 82% in the most recent quarter to $38.3 million. The surge was primarily due to sales of generic drugs, such as its Dorzolamide anti-glaucoma treatment. The company's profits increased 18 times, from $277,000 to $5.1 million.
Investors interested in profiting from consumers trading to generics will want to take a look at Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and Mylan Labs.
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Posted
Jul 14 2009, 07:50 PM
by
admin
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
By Vitaliy N. Katsenelson
The word 'contrarian' is overused in investing, I have yet to meet an investor who bragged about being a crowd-follower, which would make everyone is contrarian. In fact, Contrarian investing is very difficult as it requires one to be on the lonely side of the ledger as truly great opportunities present themselves in stocks that everyone hates, and thus, no one wants to own.
Take IMS Health (RX), which collects prescription data from transactions at pharmacies all over the world. It aggregates, analyzes and combines the data with other databases and sells it to pharmaceutical companies. For instance, from a prescription filled at a pharmacy in combination with other sources, RX would collect drug, dosage, doctor name, doctor’s specialty, zip code, illness, etc. (The patient's is omitted before RX receives the information).
Pharmaceutical companies then use this data to gain market intelligence on what is taking place in the industry and to compensate their sales force.
RX collects data from over 100,000 locations globally (key word: globally), which together with the tremendous intellectual property it has developed over the last 50 years give it a significant competitive advantage. RX has driven most of its competitors out of business, and new ones are hesitant to enter as they’d likely suffer the same fate.
Yet IMS Health is not favored by investors, to put it mildly, for several reasons I don't consider valid:
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Posted
May 13 2009, 10:41 AM
by
Anthony Mirhaydari
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
It looks like big investors are rotating out of cyclical positions -- especially bank stocks -- in favor of defensive positions.
By supporting the most heavily traded issues during Tuesday's session, mostly the 30 Dow components, the hedge-fund types tried to mask their escapes. This explains the diverging performances of the various indices, with small caps and transportation stocks being hurt badly.
The market internals gurus at Lowry's weren't fooled by the smokescreen the retreating bulls left in their wake: They found a 5 point drop in buying power and a 6 point rise in selling pressure despite the fact the Dow Industrials actually gained 50 points for the day. This was enough to trigger two of their sell signals, which means it is likely we are in the midst of the correction I've been expecting (see posts here and here)
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Posted
Mar 13 2009, 03:03 AM
by
Bernhard Warner and Matthew Yeomans
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This post is from partner site The Big Money.
Your pockets no doubt feel a bit lighter these days, but just how much wealth has been lost in the tumult of the economic downturn? The Federal Reserve has the answer, releasing a calculation of the incredible shrinking income of the American family on Thursday. Citing the Fed figures, the Wall Street Journal says last year the wealth of American families fell nearly 18%, "the biggest loss since the Federal Reserve began keeping track after World War II." American families, the engine of the global economy, saw their net worth slip by a remarkable $11 trillion, or, the WSJ points out, "a decline in a single year that equals the combined annual output of Germany, Japan and the U.K."
Even those at the top will be (if they haven't already) feeling the pinch. According to a front page WSJ article, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is talking with Rep. Barney Frank and other lawmakers to devise "a plan to tie Wall Street pay to the long-term performance of the firms." There is not yet any new legislation targeting fat-cat compensation, but Frank told the newspaper to expect something soon.
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Posted
Mar 10 2009, 03:07 AM
by
Bernhard Warner and Matthew Yeomans
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner site The Big Money.
Merger Monday is back. At least for Big Pharma. Merck (MRK) announced on Monday that it would buy rival Schering-Plough (SGP) for $41.1 billion in cash and stock, a deal the New York Times neatly sums up as being "all about the drugs." Such mega-mergers were to be expected after Pfizer (PFE) stumped up $68 billion to buy Wyeth in January. "But if Pfizer-Wyeth was driven in part by desperation, analysts said, for Merck the Schering deal may actually be a good opportunity to restock its medicine chest," the newspaper writes. Merck, with several patents expiring, would get access to successful Schering products like the prescription allergy spray Nasonex and to biotechnology drugs in development.
The Wall Street Journal focuses on the rapidly consolidating sector.
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Posted
Mar 09 2009, 11:29 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Big Pharma is running scared.
That message is coming across loud and clear, now that Merck (MRK) is buying Schering-Plough (SGP) for $41.1 billion in cash and stock. It was just a few weeks ago that Pfizer (PFE) hooked up with Wyeth in a $68 billion deal. And then there's Roche's current offer for Genentech (DNA).
Drug companies are rushing into each other's arms these days to unite against some difficult years ahead for the industry. The credit markets are dried up and the political and economic landscape is changing. The mergers are a defensive move as companies find their bottom lines increasingly under assault.
Here are some of the problems drug companies face:
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Posted
Mar 05 2009, 09:50 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 Pfizer (PFE) has some big fans at Goldman Sachs. Analysts there have just added the drug company to the Conviction Buy list, the group of stocks that Goldman is most bullish on.
Analysts there think Pfizer shares will rise to $17 per share (it's trading at $12.50 today). Pfizer recently bought rival Wyeth, and has stabilized its future profits with that deal, Goldman says. "At current levels, Pfizer is very attractive, without including major pipeline assumptions," wrote analyst Jami Rubin in a note, according to the Associated Press. Pfizer will become a world leader in drugs and vaccines. But in the short term, Rubin's expectations for Pfizer are lower than most on Wall Street.
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