Abbott (NYSE:ABT)

Abbott Laboratories is a American pharmaceutical company, founded in Chicago in 1888 by Wallace Calvin Abbott. It is engaged in the development, manufacture and sale of a diversified line of health care products, including: drugs, nutritional products, and diabetes monitoring and diagnostic devices. Its headquarters are in Abbott Park in North Chicago. Today, Abbott has approximately 90,000 employees.

ABT has a relatively strong pipeline of products, with potential major launches in medical devices and pharmaceuticals. The company is financially strong, with a solid balance sheet and excellent return on capital employed.

ABT offers a long term average return interesting of 3.33%. The company has increased its distributions for 39 consecutive years. The average annual dividend growth is also correct, at 10.08%. The distribution rate still remains correct, at 63.79%, leaving Abbott a small margin in case of a difficult passage. Furthermore, the volatility of the title in CHF is only 10.53%, benefiting from ABT's strong international exposure and the defensive sector in which the company is positioned.

Without being extraordinary, the fundamentals from a dividend point of view are in line with the company: discreet, solid, regular and sustainable. ABT is a bit of a mix between La Fontaine's turtle and ant.This strategy is effective in the long term since the title beats the market in the long term, even though it is not very sensitive to its variations, with a beta of only 0.31.

Foreign sales account for more than half of turnover, which partly protects the title against variations in the dollar, a fall in the greenback favoring exports. $risk of 0.37 nevertheless indicates that ABT remains somewhat sensitive to variations in its domestic currency, the value of the title in CHF sometimes being able to decline when the dollar weakens against the Swiss franc.

Taking these fundamentals into account, we consider that:ABT is a stock to hold or to monitor closely for possible future purchase.