Despite the prevalence of rapid enrichment schemes, those looking to increase their capital do not need to reinvent the wheel. Investing in stocks remains one of the best ways to do this. But not all titles are created equal. With an unlimited number of investment options on the market, choosing the wrong ones can mean saying goodbye to your hard-earned money.
Investing in the shares of large companies is the key to achieving your financial goals. With that in mind, here are three excellent stocks that should make you richer in the long run if you buy today: Bristol Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY), Veeva Systems (NYSE: VEEV), and Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY). See why each of these companies deserves a place in their portfolio.
BMY data by YCharts
1. Bristol Myers Squibb
Pharmaceutical giant Bristol Myers has a strong line of drugs, a rich pipeline and a juicy dividend, which can help boost revenue and earnings while rewarding investors with dividend increases.
The company boasts at least eight successful drugs, including treatment for multiple myeloma Revlimid, which saw sales in the third quarter of 2020 jump 10% year on year to $ 3 billion. Bristol Myers got its hands on Revlimid thanks to the 2019 acquisition of Celgene in a $ 74 billion cash and stock transaction. The deal reinforced the company’s line with other products such as Pomalyst, another medication for multiple myeloma. During the third quarter, Pomalyst’s sales increased 17% year-over-year, to $ 777 million. Bristol Myers also markets the anticoagulant Eliquis, which generated revenue of $ 2.1 billion in the third quarter, an increase of 9% over the same period last year.
Switching to the Bristol Myers pipeline, the company has more than four dozen clinical compounds under development and at least the same number of clinical trials underway, including a series of phase 3 studies. Newly approved products (or new indications for existing products) should boost the financial results of the pharmaceutical company in the coming years.
Although its shares underperformed the broader market recently, Bristol Myers’ prospects look attractive. The company’s revenue and profits are expected to continue growing at a good pace. Three of its drugs, Revlimid, Eliquis and Opdivo, will be among the top five best-selling drugs in the world in 2024, according to research firm Evaluate Pharma.
Bristol Myers also closed its last acquisition in November: a clinical biopharmaceutical company called MyoKardia in a $ 13.1 billion cash transaction. The main pipeline candidate for MyoKardia is mavacamten, a potential treatment for chronic heart disease called obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Management believes that “mavacamten has the potential for billions of dollars” and could be another driver of long-term growth.
Finally, with a dividend yield of 2.80% (compared to a yield of 1.55% for the S&P 500) and a low cash payment rate of 31.8%, investors can count on Bristol Myers to continue increasing their dividends. All of these factors make this pharmaceutical stock an excellent choice for 2021 and beyond.
Image source: Getty Images.
2. Veeva Systems
Veeva Systems’ mission is to help companies in different sectors, including the life sciences industry, to bring their products to the market more quickly and efficiently, ensuring regulatory compliance. The company works with many of the main players in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors, including AstraZeneca, Merck, and Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Veeva founder and CEO Peter Gassner is a former executive at the cloud-based software giant salesforce.com. Veeva Systems and Salesforce have a long-standing partnership that allows the former to use the Salesforce platform to run its cloud-based services.
Veeva’s product list includes the Veeva Vault, which helps drug makers navigate the complex clinical testing process. The company’s largest segment in revenue is subscription services. During the first nine months of its fiscal year 2021, which ended on October 31, Veeva Systems reported $ 1.07 billion in revenue, representing a 34.8% increase year over year. The company’s subscription services revenue accounted for about 80% of its total revenue.
Veeva has an excellent retention rate for its services. For its 2017, 2018 and 2019 years, its retention rate was 127%, 121% and 122%, respectively. In addition, the company is developing newer products to better serve its customers. Veeva Systems has expanded beyond the life sciences industry and entered other regulated ones, namely packaged consumer goods (CPG), chemicals and cosmetics.
The company’s vision for these sectors is the same as that of the life sciences industry. During the first three quarters of fiscal year 2021, Veeva Systems generated about $ 30 million in revenue from these spaces, which represented almost 8% of its total revenue.
It also has more than 60 customers in these three sectors, and the company sees an opportunity for growth, especially due to the changing environment of the CPG, chemical and cosmetic industries caused by the pandemic. Veeva Systems appears to be on a solid path to consistent revenue and profit growth in the near future, and its share price is also expected to continue to rise.
3. Eli Lilly
Eli Lilly is another pharmaceutical giant with a rich set of drugs. Some of the company’s best sellers include Trulicity, a diabetes drug that had sales of $ 3.6 billion in the first nine months of 2020, a jump of 22%. Other high-performance products include insulin Basaglar and the oral diabetes medication Jardiance. In the first nine months of 2020, the former’s revenue increased 5% to $ 842.3 million, while Jardiance’s sales increased 24% year-over-year to $ 840.3 million.
Lilly also has more than three dozen clinical trials underway. One of the candidates in the company’s pipeline is a potential drug for Alzheimer’s disease called donanemab. The company recently reported positive results from a phase 2 clinical trial to him. There are more than 5 million Alzheimer’s patients in the U.S., and there are no approved drugs that can treat the cognitive decline associated with it. While there is still a long way to go for donanemab, investors would do well to monitor their progress.
It is important to note that BiogenAducanumab’s is currently being reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for this indication. Both aducanumab and donanemab seek to treat the disease by removing beta-amyloid plaques from patients’ brains, which some professionals believe can help those suffering from Alzheimer’s. But considering that an expert advisory panel strongly recommended that the FDA not approve the drug, Biogen’s prospects look bleak.
Eli Lilly recently reinforced its pipeline with the planned acquisition of Prevail Therapeutics, a biotechnology that focuses on the development of gene therapies, in a cash transaction valued at about $ 880 million. Lilly already had a lot in her favor, and this change only made her long-term prospects even more attractive thanks to the potential drugs that target Parkinson’s disease and dementia, conditions for which no standard treatments exist. In short, adding shares of this pharmaceutical giant to your portfolio would be a big move for your money.