With 14.03 million shares changed hands, the volume of the stock remained heavier than its average volume of 9.79 million shares. During the session, the Drug Manufacturers – General company that operates in wider Healthcare sector, reached to the highest price of $101.775 whereas the lowest price it dropped to was $98.93. The 52-week range on MRK shows that it touched its highest point at $134.63 and its lowest point at $94.48 during that stretch. It currently has a 1-year price target of $131.26. With its current market cap of 249.18 billion, MRK has annualized dividend of $3.08 while the current yield stands at 3.11%. Beta for the stock currently stands at 0.41.
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Price Performance and Earnings:
Stock performance is one of the indicators that investors use to determine whether they will profit from a stock. The price performance of MRK was up-trending over the past week, with a rise of 2.98%, but this was down by -6.33% over a month. Three-month performance dropped to -14.70% while six-month performance fell -23.41%. The stock lost -2.46% in the past year, while it has lost -9.03% so far this year. A look at the trailing 12-month EPS for MRK yields 4.77 with Next year EPS estimates of 9.41. For the next quarter, that number is 1.84. This implies an EPS growth rate of 412.32% for this year and 21.63% for next year. EPS is expected to grow by 28.00% annually over the next five years; however, over the past five years, the company experienced an annual growth rate of -42.70%.
Float and Shares Shorts:
At present, 2.53 billion MRK shares are outstanding with a float of 2.53 billion shares on hand for trading. On 2024-10-31, short shares totaled 26.23 million, which was 104.0 higher than short shares on 1727654400. In addition to Mr. Robert M. Davis J.D. as the firm’s Chairman, President & CEO, Mr. Richard R. DeLuca Jr. serves as its Executive VP & President of Merck Animal Health.
Institutional Ownership:
Through their ownership of 0.79463995 of MRK’s outstanding shares, institutional investors have minority control over the company.
An Overview of Recent Financials:
Understanding a company as a customer does not mean you will understand it as an investor. The wise investor uses quantitative research to analyze metrics such as revenue, net income, and earnings. In its fiscal quarter reported on 2024-09-30, MRK reported revenue of $16657000000.0 and operating income of $3984000000.0. The EBITDA in the recently reported quarter was $5726000000.0 and diluted EPS was $1.24.
Analysts Ratings:
Reading analyst opinions is an effective way to decide where to invest, and there are several opinions available for MRK since 19 analysts follow the stock currently. There are 19 analysts who recommend BUY ratings, while 0 suggest SELL ratings. Of the remaining analysts, 0 believe that the stock is worth HOLDING, 0 give it an OVERWEIGHT rating, and 0 thinks that it’s UNDERWEIGHT. In the same way, a target price assigned to a stock can also reveal much about its potential. With MRK analysts setting a high price target of 155.0 and a low target of 100.0, the average target price over the next 12 months is 130.85269. Based on these targets, MRK could surge 56.28% to reach the target high and rise by 0.83% to reach the target low. Reaching the average price target will result in a growth of 31.93% from current levels.
Analysts have provided yearly estimates in a range of $7.84633 being high and $7.57577 being low. For MRK, this leads to a yearly average estimate of $7.7361. The surprise factor in the prior quarter was $2.14. Based on analyst estimates, the high estimate for the next quarter is $2.38 and the low estimate is $2.25. The average estimate for the next quarter is thus $2.3.
