Merck & Co., Inc. ($MRK) Cautious Buy or Hold to $71 Confident Investor Rating: Fair

Company name Merck & Co., Inc.
Stock ticker MRK
Live stock price [stckqut]MRK[/stckqut]
P/E compared to competitors Good

MANAGEMENT EXECUTION

Employee productivity Poor
Sales growth Poor
EPS growth Poor
P/E growth Good
EBIT growth Fair

ANALYSIS

Confident Investor Rating Fair
Target stock price (TWCA growth scenario) $91.88
Target stock price (averages with growth) $101.76
Target stock price (averages with no growth) $69.62
Target stock price (manual assumptions) $76.43

The following company description is from Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/company-profile/mrk

Merck & Co., Inc., incorporated in 1970, is a global healthcare company. The Company offers health solutions through its prescription medicines, vaccines, biologic therapies and animal health products. It operates through four segments: Pharmaceutical, Animal Health, Healthcare Services, and Alliances. The Company’s Pharmaceutical segment includes human health pharmaceutical and vaccine products marketed either directly by the Company or through joint ventures. Human health pharmaceutical products consist of therapeutic and preventive agents, generally sold by prescription, for the treatment of human disorders. The Company sells its human health pharmaceutical products primarily to drug wholesalers and retailers, hospitals, government agencies and managed healthcare providers, such as health maintenance organizations, pharmacy benefit managers, and other institutions. Vaccine products consist of preventive pediatric, adolescent and adult vaccines, primarily administered at physician offices.

 

Confident Investor comments: At this time, I think that a Confident Investor can cautiously invest in Merck & Co., Inc. as long as the price is correct and the indicators that I describe in my book The Confident Investor are favorable. Most of the fundamentals of this company are good but there are some concerns. I think there are better investments on the market so I am removing Merck from my Watch List.

If you would like to understand how to evaluate companies like I do on this site, please read my book, The Confident Investor. You can review the best companies that I have found (and I probably invest my own money in most of these companies) in my Watch List.

How was this analysis of Merck & Co., Inc. calculated?

For owners of my book, “The Confident Investor” I offer the following analysis (you must be logged in to this site as a book owner in order to see the following analysis). If you have registered and cannot see the balance of this article, make sure you are logged in and refresh your browser.
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In order to assist you in using the techniques of this book, the values that I used when calculating the Manual pricing above were:

  • Stock price at the time of the calculation: $60.46
  • Growth: 0.15
  • Current EPS (TTM): $1.53
  • P/E: 40
  • Future EPS Calc: $3.07
  • Future Stock Price Calc: $123.09
  • Target stock price: $76.43

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I hope that this makes you a Confident Investor.

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