5 Cheap Dividend Aristocrats to Buy Now

4. Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (NASDAQ: WBA)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 41
Dividend Yield: 3.9%
Number of Years of Consistent Dividend Increases:46

Share Price as of August 26: $48.65

Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (NASDAQ: WBA), a holding company, is next on our list of cheap dividend aristocrats to buy now. It owns and operates the retail pharmacy chains named Walgreens and Boots, and ranks 4th on our list.

Truist analyst David MacDonald has a Hold rating on shares of Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (NASDAQ: WBA) as of this July, alongside a price target of $52.

In the fiscal third quarter of 2021, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (NASDAQ: WBA) had an EPS of $1.38, beating estimates by $0.23. The company’s revenue was $34.03 billion, beating estimates by $526.6 million. Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (NASDAQ: WBA) has gained 1.5% in the past 6 months and 17.51% year to date.

By the end of the second quarter of 2021, 41 hedge funds out of the 873 tracked by Insider Monkey held stakes in Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (NASDAQ: WBA) worth roughly $1.1 billion. This is compared to 41 hedge funds in the previous quarter with a total stake value of approximately $1.1 billion.

Ariel Investments, an investment management firm, mentioned Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (NASDAQ: WBA) in its fourth-quarter 2020 investor letter. Here’s what they said:

“Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. has been essentially flat during our brief holding period. We have successfully owned Walgreens in the past. Recently, its share price has been pressured on concerns that Amazon may enter the prescription drug distribution business. As recently as 2015, Walgreens was a market favorite, trading at more than 20 times forward earnings. The company was expected to grow in good times and bad. Walgreens’ new clinics, designed to treat day-to-day healthcare needs such as flu shots and children’s ear infections, could be part of the solution for expensive emergency room overcrowding. Finally, trends toward generic pharmaceutics that began in 2015 are still considered a positive, as pharmacies have more influence in directing customers toward particular generics than with a patient seeking a patented drug prescribed by a doctor. Walgreens will face new competition going forward, but with its current depressed valuation, we believe the threats are more than discounted in an attractive stock price.”