ABT Stock Report

2-Year Price History

Ockham's Rating

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ABT Revenue

For a long time, value investors have used the current share price relative to sales per share levels as an important valuation tool. We utilize a historical weighted average methodology that treats recent years more importantly in the calculation. When looking at ABT through this framework, we can see that our weighted average historical high and low Price to Sales per share ratios over the last 10 years are 3.69x and 2.73x respectively.

Utilizing this range we can see that ABT’s current Price to Sales per share ratio of 2.24x is significantly below its average levels historically. In fact, with a current price of $46.28, ABT is a full 31% below its average Price to Sales ratio at comparable sales levels. This is a rare occurrence and, when taken in context of the other areas of our analysis, can be a strong positive for our outlook for ABT.

ABT Cash Earnings

Looking at ABT specifically in their Cash Earnings capabilities, Ockham views ABT as significantly below their historical average multiples of Cash Earnings, as calculated by our proprietary analysis. It is incredibly important to understand that for ABT, the current level of Cash Earnings compared to its historical levels helps identify where ABT is in relation to what the investing community was willing to pay for this level of Cash Earnings in the past. With a historical high Cash Earnings per share ratio of 18.34 and a historical low Cash Earnings per share ratio of 13.64, an investor can relate where value becomes optimal.

So what does "significantly below" mean when we talk about Price to Cash Earnings numbers for ABT? From the Ockham perspective, we are looking specifically at ABT to see if the market is recognizing the huge disparity between ABT's past stock price to Cash Earnings ratio to today's levels. At a difference of 39% below the average historical Price to Cash Earnings ratio, our view would be quite positive at this point. However, as with all metrics, we need to also take other factors into account when looking at ABT. While we view better Cash Earnings metrics as very important, if the market is slow to identify this value, or if Cash Earnings were to fall from these levels, we would become more neutral in our stance.

ABT Dividends

A positive Ockham rating does not require a company to pay out an inviting dividend or a dividend at all. However, we believe dividends provide a useful measure of a company's inherent expectations.

Comparable to our analysis of Sales and Cash Earnings per share, we examine dividend yields from ABT against the historic high and low levels over an available data range. Because ABT has an established history of paying a dividend to shareholders, there is value in comparing recent dividends to historical dividends. In ABT’s case, the estimated annual dividend is $1.60 producing a current dividend yield of 3.46%. The highest dividend yield from ABT in recent history was 3.88% while the lowest dividend yield was 1.32%. It's hard not to notice that ABT pays a current dividend yield that is 33.08% above the historical median. This peaks our interest since our analysis is looks favorably upon dividend yields that are greater than the historical median.