Word: merck
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HEALTH CARE Kerry wants to import cheap drugs from Canada, which would hurt stocks like Pfizer, Merck and Eli Lilly. Bush opposes such imports. But hospital firms may do better with Kerry, who wants to expand Medicaid and give more patients the means to pay their bills. "Companies like HCA have been hindered by bad-debt expense," says Wendell Perkins of Johnson Family funds. "We like HCA anyway, but a Kerry win would make it more attractive...
...Sanofi-Aventis deal may well be a side effect of the pharmaceutical industry's year-long market migraine, caused largely by expiring patents. There could be more mergers, but Merck, for one, seems to have hit on the less-than-acquisitive solution of partnering with companies that may have a blockbuster in the works. Last month it struck an alliance with Bristol-Myers Squibb to develop and sell an experimental diabetes drug, a joint venture similar to the one Merck formed with Schering-Plough for cholesterol treatments Zetia and Vytorin...
...Statin Island I n the fight against heart disease, drugmakers last week hailed a British government decision to green-light over-the-counter-sales of the cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins, the first such approval in the world. Starting in July, Zocor - made by U.S. pharmaceutical firm Merck, but marketed in Britain by Johnson & Johnson - will be available without prescription. A health boon? Perhaps, but with statins the most widely prescribed drugs in the U.K. - draining $1.2 billion from the National Health Service each year - the measure appears "motivated more by cost than clinical reasons," says Daniel Reynolds, spokesman...
IDENTIFY LIKELY WINNERS Gold stocks (Barrick, Newmont) and oil services and drillers (Anadarko, Schlumberger) tend to rise amid global turmoil. They also benefit from the kind of global expansion we're now seeing (led by China). Traditional safe-haven stocks like drugs (Pfizer, Merck), tobacco (Altria) and beverages (Anheuser-Busch) would hold up relatively well, and may come into favor anyway because they pay decent dividends...
...number of the health-care companies are attractive. I don't know whether we will have a national purchasing system of drugs. From my viewpoint, it's irrelevant. Drug prices would come down with controls, but usage would soar. That's the nature of the business for Pfizer and Merck, both of which I find attractive. I want companies that no matter what happens, they would be able to pay me my dividend. For a defensive play in housing look at REITs [real estate investment trusts]. They are up three years in a row, and everybody thinks they're done...