Abbott Laboratories (ABT, Financial) announced a regular quarterly dividend of 26.5 cents per share on Feb. 17.
The dividend will be paid on May 15 to shareholders of record as of April 14.
Based on the quarterly dividend, the annual dividend paid will be $1.06 per share. The dividend yield is 2.37%.
Year to date, Abbott has gained 17% and is trading at $45.05 per share. The analysts' average target price per share is $47.46, which represents a 5.3% upside from the current share price. Therefore, analysts still see room for further improvement in the coming months.
The recommendation rating is 1.9, which means the majority of analysts surveyed recommend buying shares of the U.S. global health care company. The recommendation rating ranges between 1.0 (Strong Buy) and 5.0 (Sell).
For the first quarter of 2017, analysts forecast the company will generate an EPS of 43 cents per share, a 4.9% increase from EPS of 41 cents reported in the first quarter of 2016.
Concerning revenue, analysts forecast $6.16 billion on average for the quarter, which is 26.10% higher than first-quarter 2016 revenue. It ranges between a low estimate of $6.01 billion and a high estimate of $6.36 billion.
For the year, analysts estimate EPS of $2.45, ranging between a low of $2.43 and a high of $2.48. This represents an 11.4% increase from the same figure a year ago. Revenue is expected to increase 25.30% to $26.13 billion in 2016, up from $20.85 billion in 2015.
As of the most recent quarter, Abbott had approximately $18.62 billion in cash and securities. The total debt amounted to $20.861 billion, a 252.3% increase from 2015. During the year, the U.S. global health care company issued a corporate loan for a total amount of $15.1 billion, also used to fund the purchase of St. Jude Medical (STJ, Financial).
The long-term debt-equity ratio is 100.70 versus an industry average ratio of 7.81, meaning the company is highly indebted compared to its peers, according to Reuters, but approximately 61.7% of the total amount of the long-term debt is not due by the company before 2022. The portion with maturity in 2017 amounts to $3 billion. A stake of $3.8 billion will mature between 2018 and 2019, and an amount of $4.198 billion will mature between 2020 and 2021.
However, investors shouldn’t be concerned about the huge amount of debt since the company can rely on a total liquidity of $23.62 billion when a $5 billion line of credit is also considered and on a yearly amount of $3.2 billion as CFO to fulfill its debt obligations which are characterized by a comfortable repayment schedule.
Abbott has 1.73 billion shares outstanding. The percentage of shares held by insiders is 0.21% and by institutions is 70.50%. The number of shares available for trading is 1.47 billion.
At the moment, Abbott is trading at $45.00, down 1 cent or minus 0.02% from the previous trading day. The stock is trading at 3.72 times its sales computed over a 12 trailing months’ time frame.
Abbott Ă‚ has a market capitalization of $77.64 billion and an enterprise value of $69.8 billion. Abbott Labs. is trading at 3.20 times the book value and at 13.97 times the EBITDA.
The 52-week range is between $36.76 per share and $45.79 per share. The forward price-earnings (P/E) ratio is 16.36.
During the last quarter of 2016, Joel Greenblatt (Trades, Portfolio) and Keeley Asset Management Corp (Trades, Portfolio) established positions in Abbott and bought 1,010,598 and 35,610 shares of the health care company.
Vanguard Health Care Fund (Trades, Portfolio), Richard Pzena (Trades, Portfolio) and Ken Fisher (Trades, Portfolio) increased their positions by 2.38%, 0.64% and 18.97% while George Soros (Trades, Portfolio) and Mario Gabelli (Trades, Portfolio) reduced their positions by 11.57% and 0.57%.
First Eagle Investment (Trades, Portfolio) sold out.
Disclosure: I have no position in Abbott Laboratories.
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