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The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Amgen, TOTAL, Intuit, Applied Materials and Marsh & McLennan

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For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – July 16, 2020 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Amgen (AMGN - Free Report) , TOTAL , Intuit (INTU - Free Report) , Applied Materials (AMAT - Free Report) and Marsh & McLennan (MMC - Free Report) .

Here are highlights from Wednesday’s Analyst Blog:

Top Analyst Reports for Amgen, TOTAL and Intuit

The Zacks Research Daily presents the best research output of our analyst team. Today's Research Daily features new research reports on 16 major stocks, including Amgen, TOTAL and Intuit. These research reports have been hand-picked from the roughly 70 reports published by our analyst team today.

You can see all of today’s research reports here >>>

Amgen shares have outperformed the Zacks Biomedical and Genetics industry over the past year (+42.6% vs. +18.9%) and the Zacks analyst expects the momentum to continue on the back of growth products like Prolia, Evenity, Repatha, Aimovig, Otezla and biosimilars that will drive near- to medium-term sales.

Amgen boasts a strong biosimilars portfolio, which can drive long-term growth. Amgen is also progressing with its pipeline while regularly pursuing “external opportunities” such as the acquisition of Otezla and the stake in China's BeiGene. However, pricing and competitive pressure are concerns.

Amgen also expects a significant impact from coronavirus-related business disruption in Q2, which it expects to ease in the second half of 2020. Estimates have gone down slightly ahead of Q2 results. Amgen has a positive record of earnings surprise in recent quarters.  

Shares of TOTAL have lost -28.1% over the past six months against the Zacks Integrated International Oil industry’s fall of -36.8%. The Zacks analyst believes that TOTAL is benefiting from project startups, renewable assets, LNG portfolio and expanding upstream portfolio that has above industry-average exposure to faster-growing hydrocarbon producing regions.

Streamlining the asset portfolio and syncing the same with long-term objectives are likely to boost its performance and strengthen operations. However, the company’s operations and profitability can be adversely impacted by the ongoing decline in commodity prices.

TOTAL decided to lower capital expenditure for 2020 by 25% for preserving liquidity. If commodity prices continue to remain choppy, the company might have to resort to further cost management. TOTAL's operations in some politically-troubled regions and increasing competition might affect profitability.

Intuit’s shares have gained +10.8% over the past three months against the Zacks Computer Software industry’s rise of +18.5%. The Zacks analyst believes that Intuit is benefiting from strong momentum in online ecosystem revenues and solid professional tax revenues.

The TurboTax Live offering is also driving growth in the Consumer tax business. Solid momentum in the company’s lending product, QuickBooks Capital, remains a positive. Moreover, Intuit’s strategy of shifting its business to cloud-based subscription model will help generate stable revenues over the long run.

Nonetheless, Intuit’s near-term prospect looks gloomy as the global lockdown amid the coronavirus crisis has affected small businesses, posing risks to the company’s revenue growth. Additionally, higher costs and expenses due to increased investments in engineering and marketing is likely to continue impacting bottom-line results in the near term.

Other noteworthy reports we are featuring today include Applied Materials and Marsh & McLennan.

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Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss. This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit http://www.zacks.com/performancefor information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.

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