Analysts took action on Abbott (ABT, Financial) and Bluebird Bio Inc. (BLUE, Financial).
William Blair upgraded shares of Abbott Labs to outperform from a previous market perform rating. Wells Fargo (WFC) and BMO Capital maintained an outperform rating. Morgan Stanley (WS) and JPMorgan (JPM) kept their ratings on overweight. Stifel Nicolaus confirmed its buy rating on shares of Abbott Labs.
Source: Yahoo Finance
Some indicators on Abbott Labs:
The price-book (P/B) ratio is 3.43 versus an industry median of 2.94
The price-sales (P/S) ratio is 4.23 versus an industry median of 3.06
The EBITDA margin is 21% of sales versus an industry median of 19%
The price-earnings (P/E) ratio is 243.15 versus an industry median of 30.77
The current dividend yield is 1.71% versus an industry median of 1.38% and versus an S&P 500 current dividend yield of 1.72%
The recommendation rating is 1.9, which means that today Abbott Labs is seen as a buy.
The average price target is $67.94 per share. This is a mean of 18 estimates defined on range. The range estimates are enclosed by the limits of $59 and $72. This means that on average the analysts see a 7.5% appreciation of Abbott Labs within the next 52 weeks of trading from the current share price of $63.22.
According to the Peter Lynch chart, Abbott Labs is trading above both earnings lines with and without NRI:
The forward PE ratio is 22.03 while the industry has a ratio of 25.06.
Abbott Labs has a forward dividend of $1.12 per share and a forward yield of 1.81%. The industry has a forward dividend yield of 1.40%.
Leerink Swann has downgraded shares of Bluebird Bio to market perform from a previous rating of outperform.
This is the second downgrade the company received in the last 2 months of trading. On Dec. 13, 2017, Maxim Group downgraded Bluebird Bio to hold from buy. Jefferies upgraded shares of the healthcare stock to buy from a previous hold rating on Dec. 11, 2017.
From the first week of December 2017 to date, two analysts started covering shares of Bluebird Bio, Inc. Canaccord Genuity initiated coverage on Dec. 5, 2017, with a buy rating while Oppenheimer started with a perform rating on Dec. 21, 2017.
Source: Yahoo Finance
Some indicators on Bluebird:
The price-book (P/B) ratio is 8.18 versus an industry median of 4.10
The price-sales (P/S) ratio is 260.07 versus an industry median of 11.76
The EBITDA margin is profoundly negative versus an industry median which on the contrary is 66.5%
The price-earnings (P/E) ratio is negative.
The stock has a recommendation rating of 2.2. The recommendation rating ranges between 1.0 (strong buy) and 5.0 (sell). The average target price is $201.29 per share. To date 17 analysts have been surveyed on Bluebird’s price target. Of these estimates a $113 to $309 per share range is construed. On average Bluebird bio is predicted to depreciate of $2.6 per share.
For the 52 weeks through Jan. 25 Abbott (ABT, Financial) climbed 54.4% while Bluebird Bio skyrocketed 198% on the stock market. Over the same span of time the S&P 500 index gained nearly 24%.
Source: Yahoo Finance
The most prominent top institutional holders of the two stocks include FMR, LLC, which has 14.92% of Bluebird Bio shares outstanding. The Vanguard Group, Inc. owns 7.57% of Abbott Labs.
(Disclosure: I have no positions in any security mentioned in this article.)
