Will Novartis AG (NVS) Fizzle Or Continue To Sizzle

Stock of Novartis AG (NVS) opened at $89.25 and last traded at $89.09 x 1100. More than 1,527,487 shares exchanged hands compared to an average daily volume of 2,086,479 shares. At the current pps, the market capitalization stands at 204.93B.

Let’s take a look at how the stock has performed this year so far. Novartis AG (NVS) has moved 0.47% in the last 5 days or -3.25% in the last 1 month. In long-term, Novartis AG (NVS) has changed 5.40% in 3 months and  20.39% in this year itself. Below is the chart to get a feel for the recent price action.

 

Fundamentals you simply cannot ignore

Investors try to use stocks with high beta values to quickly recoup their investments after sharp market losses. Novartis AG (NVS) currently has a Beta value of 0.70 . Beta is a measurement of a stock’s price fluctuations, which is often called volatility and is used by investors to gauge how quickly a stock’s price will rise or fall. A stock with a beta of greater than 1.0 is riskier and has greater price fluctuations, while stocks with beta values of less than 1.0 are steadier and generally larger companies. Beta is often measured against the S&P; 500 index. An S&P; 500 stock with a beta of 2.0 produced a 20 percent increase in returns during a period of time when the S&P; 500 Index grew only 10 percent. This same measurement also means the stock would lose 20 percent when the market dropped by only 10 percent. Next, let’s take a look at Novartis AG (NVS) current P/E ratio. Novartis AG (NVS) currently has a PE ratio of 18.29. PE ratio is an important parameter to look at when trading a stock mostly because it is easy to calculate. There are a couple of ways to calculate PE ratio either by dividing share price by earnings per share or dividing the market cap by net income. It is important to note that the earnings are usually taken from the trailing twelve months (TTM). Nevertheless, P/E tells us how much an investor is willing to pay for $1 of a company’s earnings. The long-term average P/E is around 15, so on average, investors are willing to pay $15 for every dollar of earnings. Another useful way to look at this: Turn the P/E ratio around to look at the E/P ratio, which when expressed as a percentage gives us the earnings yield. For instance: 1/15 gives us an earnings yield of 6.67%.

While we have already looked at Novartis AG (NVS) beta and P/E ratio, the EPS cannot be ignored. Novartis AG (NVS) EPS for the trailing twelve months was 4.87. Traders and investors often use earnings per share (TTM) to determine a company’s profitability for the past year. So in essence, EPS is the amount of a company’s net income per share of common stock. Earnings per share equal the company’s net income less any dividends paid on preferred stock divided by the weighted average number of common stock shares outstanding during the year. Novartis AG (NVS) is estimated to release its next earnings report on 12 / 2019 (N/A-Not know at this time). It would be interesting to see how the earnings fair out considering the recent developments.

The Analyst Chirp:

Novartis AG (NVS) has received an average target price from analysts of $95.41 amounting to a recommendation rating of Overweight. That comes from 26 different analysts. Perhaps, the driver for that assessment comes from the company’s valuations. Right now, we are looking at a median price-to-earnings ratio for this calendar year of 17.30. To give a sense of trend, the same data point on the estimate for next year is currently sitting at 15.75 times earnings. Drilling down a bit further, this quarter, we are looking at an average estimate from analysts for earnings per share level of 8.00. That shift to 8.00 heading into next quarter.

 

 

 

 

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