Tom,
Speaking of Bloomberg, it's got a little bit on Novartis in the
current issue. Looks good, and I am reviewing the financials.
I didn't realize they also had Gerber (acquired in 94). Powerful
franchise there. At 22 times forward earnings, it looks good.
All of the big pharms are worthwhile for long term, but my
favorite now is Merck. J&J is another good one. Schering & Plough,
Pfizer, and Warner-Lambert all look good, but they have all
had pretty good runs recently. An interesting one is American
Home Products, which is being hurt by the fen-fen stuff, but
is still an awesome business. So, in order, Merck, J&J, AHP.
I'm trying to forget Hillary. The deal is, only the pharms have
the money to truly advance both technology and drug design, and
if the US kills them with price controls, then we all will have
much bigger problems than an underperforming stock or two. One
of the interesting things is that only like 7% of health care
expenditures are for pharm. And less than 20% is doctors. The
rest is the administrative infrastructure and money in insurers
pockets. Pharms will be the last to be hit IMO.
Biotech stocks are always risky, not the least because they
are often run by egomaniacs.
Good Investing,
Mike |
