The Pharmaceutical segment offers human health pharmaceutical products in the areas of oncology, hospital acute care, immunology, neuroscience, virology, cardiovascular and diabetes, as well as vaccine products, such as preventive pediatric, adolescent and adult vaccines.
The Animal Health segment discovers, develops, manufactures and markets veterinary pharmaceuticals, vaccines and health management solutions and services, as well as digitally connected identification, traceability and monitoring products.
Merck serves drug wholesalers and retailers, hospitals and government agencies; managed health care providers, such as health maintenance organizations, pharmacy benefit managers and other institutions; and physicians and physician distributors, veterinarians and animal producers. The company has collaborations with AstraZeneca, Bayer, Eisai, Ridgeback Biotherapeutics and Gilead Sciences.
Merck stock comes with a 3.10% dividend. Goldman Sachs has set a $106 target price. The $100.68 consensus target is also well above Thursday’s close at $88.93.
Microsoft
This is a conservative way for investors to participate in the massive cloud growth and to own a top tech idea that is trading 25% below its 52-week high. Microsoft Inc. (NASDAQ: MSFT) manufactures, licenses and supports a wide range of software products. The company has transformed its business model from a component-driven model (personal computer, server) to one driven by the need for cloud capacity.
Many Wall Street analysts agree that Microsoft has become a clear number two in the public or hyper-scale cloud infrastructure market with Azure, which is the company’s cloud computing platform offerings, and which continues growing at triple-digit levels. Some have flagged Azure as the biggest rival to Amazon’s AWS service.
Some analysts maintain that Microsoft is discounting Azure for large enterprises, so that Azure may be cheaper than AWS for larger users. The cloud was big in the 2021 earnings reports so far and will remain a growing part of the software giant’s earnings profile.
The dividend yield is just 0.86%. Goldman Sachs’s price target of $365 compares with a $336.06 consensus target. Microsoft stock closed on Thursday at $287.02.
NRG
This company looks poised to break out at current trading levels and offers safety and income. NRG Energy Inc. (NYSE: NRG) operates as an integrated power company in the United States that produces, sells and delivers electricity and related products and services to 3.6 million residential, industrial and commercial consumers.
The company generates electricity using natural gas, coal, oil, solar, nuclear and battery storage. It also provides system power, distributed generation, renewable products, backup generation, storage and distributed solar, demand response, energy efficiency, advisory and on-site energy solutions, as well as carbon management and specialty services.
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