In today’s recent session, 2.89 million shares of the Merck & Co Inc (NYSE:MRK) have been traded, and its beta is 0.36. Most recently the company’s share price was $85.89, and it changed around -$0.51 or -0.59% from the last close, which brings the market valuation of the company to $217.27B. MRK at last check was trading at a discount to its 52-week high of $134.63, offering almost -56.75% off that amount. The share price’s 52-week low was $86.27, which indicates that the recent value has fallen by an impressive -0.44% since then. We note from Merck & Co Inc’s average daily trading volume that its 10-day average is 18.71 million shares, with the 3-month average coming to 13.01 million.
Merck & Co Inc stock received a consensus recommendation rating of Buy, based on a mean score of 1.86. If we narrow it down even further, the data shows that 0 out of 28 analysts rate the stock as a Sell; another 5 rate it as Overweight. Among the rest, 9 recommended MRK as a Hold, whereas 14 deemed it a Buy, and 0 rated it as Underweight.
Merck & Co Inc (NYSE:MRK) trade information
Instantly MRK has been showing red trend so far today with a performance of -0.59% on intraday trading today. The performance over the last five days has remained in the red territory. The rise to weekly highs of 90.74 on recent trading dayincreased the stock’s daily price by 5.34%. The company’s shares are currently down -13.66% year-to-date, but still down -5.35% over the last five days. On the other hand, Merck & Co Inc (NYSE:MRK) is -13.46% down in the 30-day period. We can see from the shorts that 34.12 million shares have been sold at a short interest cover period of 3.46 day(s).
The consensus price target as assigned by Wall Street analysts is $136, which translates to bulls needing to increase their stock price by 36.85% from its current value. Analyst projections state that MRK is forecast to be at a low of $106 and a high of $148.
Merck & Co Inc (MRK) estimates and forecasts
Looking at the company’s year-over-year earnings, the past five years showed a positive earnings growth rate of 12.04%. Merck & Co Inc earnings are expected to increase by 18.13% in 2025, but the outlook is positive 11.91% per year for the next five years.
MRK Dividends
Merck & Co Inc’s next quarterly earnings report is expected to be released in March. The annual dividend yield of the stock is 3.63 percent and its annual dividend per share was 3.12. It is important to note, however, that the 3.63% dividend yield ratio should be regarded as a guide only, as many other factors should be taken into consideration before making any investment decision. The average dividend yield for the past five years averaged 2.92 per year.
Merck & Co Inc (NYSE:MRK)’s Major holders
Upon looking at major shareholders, it appears that insiders hold 0.06% of Merck & Co Inc shares, and 79.46% of them are in the hands of institutional investors. The stock currently has a share float of 79.50%. Merck & Co Inc stock is held by 4347.0 institutions, with VANGUARD GROUP INC being the largest institutional investor. By 2024-06-30, it held 9.6596% of the shares, which is about 244.68 million shares worth $30.29 billion.
BLACKROCK INC., with 8.1838% or 207.3 million shares worth $25.66 billion as of 2024-06-30, holds the second largest percentage of outstanding shares.
Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund and Vanguard 500 Index Fund were the top two Mutual Funds as of Sep 30, 2024 . The former held 80.36 shares worth $6.9 billion, making up 3.18% of all outstanding shares. On the other hand, Vanguard 500 Index Fund held roughly 66.39 shares worth around $5.7 billion, which represents about 2.62% of the total shares outstanding.
