Top 5 Healthcare Stocks to Buy

4. Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 79  

Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK) operates as a healthcare company worldwide. It is one of the top healthcare stocks to invest in. On October 5, the company announced that it had opened a new secondary packaging facility in Singapore to support production of vaccines and biologics including immunotherapies. The firm said that it had also broken ground for a new plant which will produce inhalers. This manufacturing facility is also a part of a $500 million investment project of the firm.

On September 14, Berenberg analyst Luisa Hector upgraded Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK) stock to Buy from Hold with a price target of $100, up from $95, noting that the firm offered investors medium-term growth just ahead of the sector average and no litigation overhang. 

Among the hedge funds being tracked by Insider Monkey, Washington-based investment firm Fisher Asset Management is a leading shareholder in Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK), with 12 million shares worth more than $1.1 billion. 

In its Q2 2022 investor letter, Chartwell Investment Partners, an asset management firm, highlighted a few stocks and Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK) was one of them. Here is what the fund said:

“In the Dividend Equity accounts, the three best performers in Q2 includes Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK), up 12.0%. Merck, like other pharma companies, is in a defensive business, but the stock also did well as peak-sales estimates for their flagship drug, Keytruda, have gone up (JPMorgan estimates $32 billion in sales by 2026).”