No. of Recommendations: 2
I didn’t expect a Monaco resident to appreciate the dividend! Plus, it’s double counting. Those dividends are just part of the P.
It's true, I don't usually consider a yield when picking a stock. It's a downside for me, really. Dividends are highly taxed for me, whereas retained earnings generally show up as lightly taxed capital gains from a rising share price.
But
(a) I know some other investors appreciate a coupon, and
(b) it really is a small defence against a stock price that languishes for a long time. This is a very old fashioned view, but then again we haven't had a secular bear market for quite a while and people forget what they're like.
So although Novo’s P/E looks reasonable, the E is going to be challenged in the next few years and the ‘bargain price’ may just be the market applying the appropriate haircut.
Opinions differ. I think they'll earn quite a bit of money...probably. Predicting the stock price (or earnings) of any single drug firm is a mug's game, but my expectation is that they'll do OK or quite well. The rise of competition may whack their growth, but my minimally-informed opinion is that their own business will continue to do fine, probably not below recent levels within rounding error.
I think a program of repeated cash-backed near-the-money put writing against NVO (similar to, but different from, covered calls) could do quite well in the next few years, which is my tentative plan. I very much doubt they'll disappear.
Jim
