Merck & Co. Inc. (NYSE:MRK) shares, rose in value on Friday, May 26, with the stock price down by -0.42% to the previous day’s close as strong demand from buyers drove the stock to $111.83.
Actively observing the price movement in the recent trading, the stock is buoying the session at $112.30, falling within a range of $111.09 and $113.50. The value of beta (5-year monthly) is 0.35 whereas the PE ratio is 21.91 over 12-month period. Referring to stock’s 52-week performance, its high was $119.65, and the low was $83.05. On the whole, MRK has fluctuated by -2.89% over the past month.
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With the market capitalization of Merck & Co. Inc. currently standing at about $281.28 billion, investors are eagerly awaiting this quarter’s results, scheduled for Aug 01, 2023. The company’s Forward Dividend Ratio is 2.92, with its dividend yield at 2.60%. As a result, investors might want to see an improvement in the stock’s price before the company announces its earnings report. Analysts are projecting the company’s earnings per share (EPS) to be $1.85, which is expected to increase to $2.12 for fiscal year $6.99 and then to about $8.53 by fiscal year 2024. Data indicates that the EPS growth is expected to be -6.60% in 2024, while the next year’s EPS growth is forecast to be 22.00%.
Analysts have estimated the company’s revenue for the quarter at $14.41 billion, with a low estimate of $14.25 billion and a high estimate of $14.55 billion. According to the average forecast, sales growth in current quarter could jump down -1.30%, compared to the corresponding quarter of last year. Wall Street analysts also predicted that in 2024, the company’s y-o-y revenues would reach $58.71 billion, representing a decrease of -1.00% from the revenues reported in the last year’s results.
Revisions could be a useful indicator to get insight on short-term price movement; so for the company, there were 1 upward and no downward review(s) in last seven days. We see that MRK’s technical picture suggests that short-term indicators denote the stock is a 50% Buy on average. However, medium term indicators have put the stock in the category of 50% Buy while long term indicators on average have been pointing out that it is a 100% Buy.
27 analyst(s) have assigned their ratings of the stock’s forecast evaluation on a scale of 1.00-5.00 to indicate a strong buy to a strong sell recommendation. The stock is rated as a Hold by 7 analyst(s), 16 recommend it as a Buy and 4 called the MRK stock Overweight. In the meantime, 0 analyst(s) believe the stock as Underweight and 0 think it is a Sell. Thus, investors eager to increase their holdings of the company’s stock will have an opportunity to do so as the average rating for the stock is Overweight.
The stock’s technical analysis shows that the PEG ratio is about 2.68, with the price of MRK currently trading nearly -3.67% and -0.75% away from the simple moving averages for 20 and 50 days respectively. The Relative Strength Index (RSI, 14) currently indicates a reading of 37.94, while the 7-day volatility ratio is showing 1.91% which for the 30-day chart, stands at 1.79%. Furthermore, Merck & Co. Inc. (MRK)’s beta value is 0.36, and its average true range (ATR) is 2.02. The company’s stock has been forecasted to trade at an average price of $123.61 over the course of the next 52 weeks, with a low of $102.00 and a high of $135.00. Based on these price targets, the low is 8.79% off current price, whereas the price has to move -20.72% to reach the yearly target high. Additionally, analysts’ median price of $127.00 is likely to be welcomed by investors because it represents a decrease of -13.57% from the current levels.
A comparison of Merck & Co. Inc. (MRK) with its peers suggests the former has fared considerably weaker in the market. MRK showed an intraday change of -0.42% in today’s session so far, and over the past year, it grew by 19.29%%. In comparison, Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) has moved higher at 0.25% today and is down -13.82% over the past 12 months. On the other hand, the price of Pfizer Inc. (PFE) has risen 0.36% today. The stock, however, is off -29.31% from where it was a year ago. The PE ratio stands at 21.91 for Merck & Co. Inc., compared to 32.30 for Johnson & Johnson, and 7.46 for Pfizer Inc. Other than that, the overall performance of the S&P 500 during the today’s session so far shows that it gained 1.11%. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Improved by 1.00%.
Data on historical trading for Merck & Co. Inc. (NYSE:MRK) indicates that the trading volumes over the past 10 days have averaged 6.14 million and over the past 3 months, they’ve averaged 7.42 million. According to company’s latest data on outstanding shares, there are 2.54 billion shares outstanding.
Nearly 0.10% of Merck & Co. Inc.’s shares belong to company insiders and institutional investors own 76.60% of the company’s shares. The data on short interest also indicates that stock shorts accounted for 19.1 million shares as on Apr 27, 2023, resulting in a short ratio of 3. According to the data, the short interest in Merck & Co. Inc. (MRK) stood at 0.75% of shares outstanding as of Apr 27, 2023; the number of short shares registered in Mar 30, 2023 reached 22.07 million. The stock has risen by 0.79% since the beginning of the year, thereby showing the potential of a further growth. This could raise investors’ confidence to be optimistic about the MRK stock heading into the next quarter.
