Canaccord Genuity analyst Mark Massaro maintained a Hold rating on Laboratory Corp (LH) yesterday and set a price target of $155. The company’s shares closed yesterday at $147.46.
Massaro wrote:
“We do concede that LabCorp is trading below its trailing 5-year forward P/E multiple; however, we think the pressures the company face merit the stock trading at a discount to recent history. LH does expect M&A opportunities to be more plentiful in 2019 and will also repurchase stock, thus we think the downside is limited here. We reiterate our HOLD rating and $155 PT, which uses a 13.1x multiple on our ’20 Adj. EPS of $11.85. Q4 results. Adj. EPS of $2.52 (+11%) narrowly beat our/Street’s $2.49 estimate (helped by a sizable $400M of share buybacks in Q4), while revs of $2,788M (+1.6% Y/Y%) were just light of our $2,804M (+2.2%). LabCorp Diagnostics revs of $1,694M (-2.8%) were in line with our $1,697M, while Covance revs of $1,099M (+9.6%) came in below our $1,107ME.”
According to TipRanks.com, Massaro is a 5-star analyst with an average return of 15.1% and a 56.2% success rate. Massaro covers the Healthcare sector, focusing on stocks such as HTG Molecular Diagnostics, Meridian Bioscience Inc, and Quanterix Corporation.
The word on The Street in general, suggests a Moderate Buy analyst consensus rating for Laboratory Corp with a $163.64 average price target, representing a 11.0% upside. In a report released yesterday, Craig-Hallum also maintained a Hold rating on the stock with a $159 price target.
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The company has a one-year high of $190.36 and a one-year low of $119.38. Currently, Laboratory Corp has an average volume of 1.02M.
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Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings is a clinical laboratory company, which engages in the provision of clinical laboratory and end-to-end drug development services. It operates through the LabCorp Diagnostics and Covance Drug Development segments. The LabCorp Diagnostics segment includes core testing as well as genomic and esoteric testing.
