Abbott-Live your best life forever

Abbott is an American multinational company that deals in medical equipment and healthcare products.Abbott was founded by Wallace Calvin Abbott in 1888 out of Chicago, United States. Abbott started as a pharmacy by Dr.Wallace Abbott when he was a practicing physician but the differentiating factor was the active involvement of a medicinal plant generally an alkaloid.This approach was very successful which caused the company to garner international affiliates in London ,India and Canada.Following this, they went public in 1929 which was quite inauspicious due to the great depression that followed.

Abbott is currently trading a 125-135$ with a market cap of 225B $.They mainly have 4 major revenue streams which are established pharmaceuticals that include the sale of prescription medicines, nutritional which include the sale of their health and gym supplements, diagnostic services which are their laboratories and hospitals and medical devices which include their pace makers and hospital equipment.During the Covid 19 pandemic, they innovated and were the first company to provide rapid self antigen tests and they have heavily contributed to the development of the Covid 19 vaccine by Pfizer.

Abbott has a median price forecast of 144$ with a high estimate of 160$ and a low estimate of 110$.The median price forecast represents a 13% increase from the last trading price of 128$.Out of 11 analysts, more than 6 recommend a buy and hold for Abbott with a investment horizon of 3 years for maximum return on investment.The increased demand for medicine and other healthcare products is the reason for this surge in sales and thereby increasing stock price.

Abbott is a well established company with a history spurred with innovation.They have constantly been innovating and are market leaders in the healthcare space.Their acquisitions and mergers have allowed them to be a market leader and for a long time they had monopolised the American healthcare industry.Abbott has developed 5 minute antigen self testing kits which are used by people all around the world.The testing kit was also able to detect the various variations and mutations of the Covid 19 virus which has allowed instant antigen testing.Their relatively low price has allowed increased sales and profitability as it attracts low income consumer groups as well as corporates who are mandated to show negative results for every employee every 3 days.They have also been progressing in their medical equipment with the segment bringing in 30% of the company’s annual revenue.The most innovative and notable device would be the glucose monitoring device FreeStyle Libre 3 which is expected to outperform the sales of all specialised glucose monitoring device companies.Apart from this, Abbott is also becoming future ready.They have been heavily investing in education for medicinal specialists and also provide scholarships for pre med students.In addition to this, they have been investing into Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality to connect doctors to patients around the world and also to provide a more comprehensive training procedure to doctors.They intend to train physicians virtually in disturbed areas so that they can provide treatment to patients.They were also successfully able to perform diagnostics and neuro modulation virtually using just family members or basic nurses.Lastly, they are also working with the United Nations to fulfil the Sustainable development goals by reducing medicine prices and providing free healthcare and diagnostics services to low income wage groups. Although, they are growing sustainably they have faced several lawsuits over false advertising over their drug Tricor and FreeStyle diabetes products for which they were asked to pay 1.5B $ in lawsuit settlements.Such issues are rather common in the healthcare industry with Abbott having the lowest payouts for lawsuits implying significantly higher reliability.Abbott is a stability stock with growth projected to be similar to that of industry indexes meaning that it is a buy for investors closer to their cash out horizon.