How to Pick a Healthcare Stock That Can Weather Any Market

1 hour ago 2

Selena Maranjian, The Motley Fool

Tue, April 28, 2026 astatine 9:05 AM CDT 3 min read

These are times that tin marque an capitalist nervous. Our state is waging a war, portion tariffs person disrupted the planetary economy, with immoderate commercialized partnerships changing. With truthful overmuch seemingly changing from period to month, it's just to interest astir the effect of each this connected our banal portfolios and to question stocks that are sturdy.

Then see Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT), which offers a batch to disquieted investors.

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Someone is astatine a machine showing a banal graph and he's smiling.

Why Abbott?

Here are immoderate reasons to see investing successful Abbott Labs:

It's a dividend-paying stock, with a caller dividend output of 2.8%. Better still, it has paid its shareholders for 399 quarters successful a enactment -- which is astir 100 years! -- and it has upped its payout for 51 years successful a row. Want more? Well, its payout ratio, the percent of its net it pays retired arsenic dividends, was precocious conscionable 67%, leaving plentifulness of country for much increases. And dividends thin to beryllium paid nary substance what the system is doing.
Abbott has declared 399 consecutive quarterly dividends since 1924 and has accrued the dividend payout for 54 consecutive years. Abbott is simply a subordinate of the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats® Index, which tracks companies that person annually accrued their dividend for 25 consecutive years. (Dividend Aristocrats® is simply a registered trademark of Standard & Poor’s Financial Services LLC.)

It's growing. In its archetypal quarter, gross grewnearly 8% twelvemonth implicit year, portion net per stock (EPS) grew by 6%. That's successful portion due to the fact that of acquisitions, specified arsenic its caller acquisition of Exact Sciences, which brings with it oncology diagnostics expertise.
It's diversified. As absorption noted on with its first-quarter report, "Our crab diagnostics business, aesculapian devices portfolio and pipeline advancement are among cardinal maturation drivers." This is valuable, due to the fact that if 1 part falters, others tin instrumentality up the slack.
Its shares look reasonably valued astatine caller levels. Its forward-looking price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio, for example, iw 16.6, good beneath its five-year mean of 23.6, and its price-to-sales ratio is 3.5, beneath its mean of 4.8.

Give the banal a person look if you're intrigued.

Should you bargain banal successful Abbott Laboratories close now?

Before you bargain banal successful Abbott Laboratories, see this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor expert squad conscionable identified what they judge are the 10 champion stocks for investors to bargain now… and Abbott Laboratories wasn’t 1 of them. The 10 stocks that made the chopped could nutrient monster returns successful the coming years.

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