In this article, we discuss the 5 safe healthcare stocks for a retirement stock portfolio. If you want to read about some more healthcare stocks, go directly to Retirement Stock Portfolio: 11 Safe Healthcare Stocks to Consider.
5. Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 77
Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) discovers, develops, manufactures, markets, distributes, and sells biopharmaceutical products worldwide. It is one of the best healthcare stocks for a retirement stock portfolio. On November 4, Swiss healthcare regulator Swissmedic announced that a lab investigation on the vials of Pfizer/ BioNTech, an Omicron boosters linked to bubble formation, did not indicate any issues with the vaccine. The regulator said that the batch in question can be used for vaccines.
On November 2, Barclays analyst Carter Gould maintained an Equal Weight rating on Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) stock and raised the price target to $49 from $44, noting that the company’s third quarter delivered a solid beat and raise due to Comirnaty, a COVID vaccine.
Among the hedge funds being tracked by Insider Monkey, Connecticut-based firm AQR Capital Management is a leading shareholder in Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) with 10.7 million shares worth more than $467.6 million.
In its Q4 2021 investor letter, ClearBridge Investments, an asset management firm, highlighted a few stocks and Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) was one of them. Here is what the fund said:
“While the level of general turnover abated as we progressed through 2021, it remained high in one area: post-COVID-19 recovery plays. The concept behind this investment thesis was, and still is, straightforward: with the advent of effective vaccines, the path from pandemic to endemic is just a matter of time. As this transition occurs, the estimated excess savings of over $2 trillion built up on U.S. consumer balance sheets will unlock dramatic pent-up demand for experiences, especially global travel. This investment case seemed especially compelling when the Pfizer vaccine positively surprised markets in November 2020. As a result, we made post-COVID-19 stocks (which were trading well below our estimate of recovery value) a sizable theme within the portfolio. We understood this to be a more aggressive tilt in positioning because it required a major improvement in demand to catalyze fundamentals and drive price toward higher business values. While we accepted that recovery would not be smooth and that it would take time to deploy vaccines both domestically and globally, we decided that recovery was the logical path of least resistance and we were being well compensated for these risks.”
