Merck stock: buy or sell?
Updated on:
May 21st, 2019
5
Merck & Co., Inc. provides healthcare solutions worldwide. It operates in four segments: Pharmaceutical, Animal Health, Healthcare Services, and Alliances.
Should I buy Merck stock?
Make a decision about when to buy or sell stocks is one of the hardest parts of being a trader or investor. Following a trading strategy helps to make decisions easier, quicker and with less hesitations. At Stocks2.com, we use very simple but trusted and powerful trend following trading strategies. Simple things usually work the best.Currently, Merck stock doesn't match any of these trading strategies, so our recommendation is not to buy.
| Buy setup | Elegible |
|---|---|
| New all-time high | No |
| New 52 week high | No |
| Price crossing up 200d MA | No |
| 100d MA crossing up 200d MA | No |
Is Merck stock a buy?
Financial institutions and banks publish stock ratings everyday.
At Stocks2.com, we detected 8 ratings published for MRK stock in the last 30 days. The general sentiment of these ratings is bullish for MRK stock, with 6 positive ratings.| Date | Analyst / Broker | Previous rating | Current rating |
| 2019-5-2 | UBS Group | Buy | Buy |
| 2019-5-1 | Bank of America | Buy | Buy |
| 2019-3-4 | Cantor Fitzgerald | n/a | Buy |
| 2019-3-29 | Cantor Fitzgerald | n/a | Buy |
| 2019-2-22 | Cantor Fitzgerald | n/a | Overweight |
| 2019-2-20 | Argus | Hold | Buy |
| 2019-2-19 | BMO Capital Markets | n/a | Hold |
| 2019-1-23 | BMO Capital Markets | Outperform | Market Perform |
Merck stock analysis
Daily outlook
Merck shares stepped up 0.77% to $79.49 today.
Shares of Merck stepped up a tiny 0.77% and closed at $79.49. Since price and SMA100d lines crossed up on Thursday, MRK climbed $1.94 (2.50%). On April, MRK hit new all time highs, pushing higher previous ATH of $83.47 recorded on March. New ATHs are usual entry points for many trading setups as there aren't higher resistences.
Weekly outlook
Shares of Merck ended this week at $79.49 and gained a slightly good 0.98%. By mid April MRK plunged a scary -8.53% in just one week.
Merck stock just marked a top under its last top. Athought it's not concerning right now, investors in MRK should be alerted as this could be a warning for future complications. You should be expectant to Merck price to not slide under , as this would complicate possible price recovery in the short and mid-term. Not so far away is the last all-time high Merck marked early April. Late April MRK price bounced up over the SMA of 40 weeks that acted as support stopping new slides. Since late June 2018 when SMA20w and SMA40w crossed up, MRK price gained $19.27 per share (32.00%).
Merck stock price history
Merck stock historical price chart
MRK stock reached all-time highs on April with a price of $83.85.
Merck stock price target is $90.70
How much a stock will be priced tomorrow or next week is quite unpredictable However, many stock price predictions are published every day by banks, financial institutions and independent analysts. You should not follow the analysts' MRK stock price predictions in the hope that they will be met as they may be wrong and not met. For the last month we found 6 price forecasts for Merck stock:| Date | Analyst / Broker | Action | Previous target | Current target | Diff |
| 2019-5-2 | UBS Group | Raises Target | $87.00 | $88.00 | 1.1% |
| 2019-5-1 | Bank of America | Raises Target | $90.00 | $91.00 | 1.1% |
| 2019-3-4 | Cantor Fitzgerald | Reiterates | n/a | $95.00 | - |
| 2019-3-29 | Cantor Fitzgerald | Reiterates | n/a | $95.00 | - |
| 2019-2-20 | Argus | Raises Target | n/a | $95.00 | - |
| 2019-1-23 | BMO Capital Markets | Downgrades | n/a | $80.00 | - |
| (in average) | $88.50 | $90.70 | 2.0% |
Financials and fundamental analysis
Earnings date and Earnings per Share
For the last 21 days, when Merck published its last earnings report, it inched a slightly fine 3.53%. Unfortunately, reported EPS is not yet available in our database.| Quarter | Reporting date | Estimated EPS | Actual EPS | Surprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-Q2 | - | n/a | 1.27 | n/a |
| 2017-Q3 | 2017-10-27 | 1.03 | 1.11 | 7.8% |
| 2017-Q4 | 2018-02-02 | 0.94 | 0.98 | 4.3% |
| 2018-Q1 | 2018-05-01 | 0.99 | 1.05 | 6.1% |
| 2018-Q2 | 2018-07-27 | 1.03 | 1.06 | 2.9% |
| 2018-Q3 | 2018-10-25 | 1.16 | 1.19 | 2.6% |
| 2018-Q4 | 2019-02-01 | 1.03 | 1.04 | 1.0% |
| 2019-Q1 | 2019-04-30 | 1.08 | n/a | n/a |
| 2019-Q2 | - | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| 2019-Q3 | - | n/a | n/a | n/a |
Annual financial results
In 2018, Merck annual revenues escalated a good 5.41% to $42,294.00 million USD from $40,122.00 marked in 2017. When comparing 2018 vs 2017, slightly better, profit margin (that is, the net income divided by revenues) jumped a 8.74% to 14.71%. To have an up to date picture of the financial situation of Merck, we have calculated the trailing twelve month (TTM) sales and income figures. TTM values are the sum of the last 4 quarters and aproximate to an annual fiscal report ending in 2019-Q1 that can be compared to 2018 fiscal year results. Annual Merck TTM sales up to March 2019 were $43,073.00 and earnings were $8,399.00 M dollars. If we compare this TTM figures with the last reported annuality, we can review Merck business evolution since December 2018: Annual turnover up to March, compared to lastest yearly report, appreciated a tiny 1.84%. Regarding profit margin, Merck raised 4.79% to 14.71%| Year | Sales | YoY | Income/(margin) | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | $44,090 M | - | $4,400 M10.0% | - |
| 2014 | $42,237 M | -4.20% | $11,920 M28.2% | 170.91% |
| 2015 | $39,498 M | -6.48% | $4,442 M11.2% | -62.73% |
| 2016 | $39,807 M | 0.78% | $3,920 M9.8% | -11.75% |
| 2017 | $40,122 M | 0.79% | $2,394 M6.0% | -38.93% |
| 2018 | $42,294 M | 5.41% | $6,220 M14.7% | 159.82% |
| TTM | $43,073 M | 1.84% | $8,399 M19.5% | 35.03% |
Quarterly financial results
Merck reported $10,816.00 million in sales for 2019-Q1, a -1.65% decline compared to previous quarter. Reported quarter income marked $2,915.00 million with a profit margin of 26.95%. Profit margin boosted a 10.34% compared to previous quarter when profit margin was 16.61%. When comparing revenues to same quarter last year, Merck sales marked a very good gain and rose a 7.76%.| Quarter | Sales1 | QoQ2 | Income1/(margin) | QoQ2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-Q2 | $9,880 M | - | $1,950 M19.7% | - |
| 2017-Q3 | $10,310 M | 4.35% | $-56 M-0.5% | -102.87% |
| 2017-Q4 | $10,433 M | 1.19% | $-1,046 M-10.0% | 1,767.86% |
| 2018-Q1 | $10,037 M | -3.80% | $736 M7.3% | -170.36% |
| 2018-Q2 | $10,465 M | 4.26% | $1,707 M16.3% | 131.93% |
| 2018-Q3 | $10,794 M | 3.14% | $1,950 M18.1% | 14.24% |
| 2018-Q4 | $10,998 M | 1.89% | $1,827 M16.6% | -6.31% |
| 2019-Q1 | $10,816 M | -1.65% | $2,915 M27.0% | 59.55% |
Merck ownership
When you are planning to buy shares of a company, it's worth to have a look its ownership structure.Merck shares owned by insiders (that is, founders, CEO, CTO, main executives or other management staff) currently counts a 0.08% of all shares.
In case of Merck stock, 78.28% of its shares are held by institutions (mutual funds, pension funds, big banks and other large financial institutions). Bearish positions for MRK stock account 0.00%, no big difference from last month.
The following table compares ownership indicators for other stocks related to Merck:
| MRK | AMGN | BMY | GSK | JNJ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Market cap | $204.3 B | $102.7 B | $75.9 B | $193.7 B | $368.2 B |
| Total shares | 2,570.0 M | 609.9 M | 1,640.0 M | 4,920.0 M | 2,660.0 M |
| Float shares | 2,570.0 M | 609.0 M | 1,630.0 M | 2,440.0 M | 2,650.0 M |
| - Institutional holdings (%) | 78.3% | 81.9% | 75.0% | 11.0% | 69.2% |
| - Insider holdings (%) | 0.1% | 0.2% | 0.1% | 0.0% | 0.1% |
| Shares in short selling | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
Merck summary
| Tuesday, May 21st, 2019 | |
|---|---|
| Open | $79.08 |
| Close | $79.49 |
| Day range | $78.53 - $79.72 |
| Previous close | $78.88 |
| Session gain | 0.77% |
| Average true range | $1.33 |
| 50d mov avg | $79.53 |
| 100d mov avg | $78.09 |
| 200d mov avg | $74.46 |
| Daily pattern | |
| Weekly pattern | lt01a |
Merck performance
To better understand Merck performance you must compare its gains with other related stocks in same sector or industry. For Merck, the comparison is made against Amgen, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, , Eli Lilly and, Novartis, Pfizer, and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries.| Stock | 3m | 6m | 12m |
|---|---|---|---|
| MRKMerck | -0.92% | 7.93% | 38.39% |
| AMGNAmgen | -9.42% | -11.12% | -2.65% |
| BMYBristol-Myers Squ... | -8.35% | -11.04% | -9.55% |
| GSKGlaxoSmithKline | -1.65% | -0.48% | 4.01% |
| JNJ | 2.00% | -1.41% | 16.21% |
| LLYEli Lilly and | -5.74% | 4.11% | 43.48% |
| NVSNovartis | 4.92% | 8.19% | 25.16% |
| PFEPfizer | -2.33% | -1.89% | 20.55% |
| SNY | 4.81% | -3.92% | 12.73% |
| TEVATeva Pharmaceutic... | -33.39% | -47.63% | -48.20% |
Merck competitors
We selected a few stocks to conform a list of Merck competitors to check if you are interested in investing in MRK:- Amgen (AMGN)
- Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY)
- GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)
- (JNJ)
- Eli Lilly and (LLY)
- Novartis (NVS)
- Pfizer (PFE)
- (SNY)
- Teva Pharmaceutical Industries (TEVA)
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