A new buy for income

Article Excerpt

PFIZER INC. $20 (New York symbol PFE; Income Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 7.9 billion; Market cap: $158.0 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.4; Dividend yield: 4.0%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.pfizer.com) is a major pharmaceutical maker. It also makes hospital and consumer products, and animal-health drugs. Pfizer sells its products in more than 150 countries; overseas sales account for about 57% of Pfizer’s total sales. Pfizer has a lot in common with AT&T. It, too, is facing falling sales in its older businesses, as patents on its top-selling drugs, such as Lipitor (for high cholesterol) expire. Like AT&T, Pfizer has used acquisitions to fuel its growth. That includes its big, $68-billion purchase of rival drug maker Wyeth in 2009, which gave it a number of promising new drugs, including Enbrel (psoriasis) and Zosyn (bacterial infections). Pfizer cut its quarterly dividend by half in 2009, to $0.16 a share from $0.32, to conserve cash in the wake of the Wyeth purchase. However, it…