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The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Cisco, Abbott Laboratories, NextEra Energy, Gilead Sciences and Edwards Lifesciences

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For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – April 30, 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: Cisco (CSCO - Free Report) , Abbott Laboratories (ABT - Free Report) , NextEra Energy (NEE - Free Report) , Gilead Sciences (GILD - Free Report) and Edwards Lifesciences (EW - Free Report) .

Here are highlights from Wednesday’s Analyst Blog:

Top Stocks Research Reports for Cisco, Abbott, NextEra and More

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 Cisco, Abbott Laboratories and NextEra Energy. 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 >>>

Cisco’s shares have mildly outperformed the Zacks Computer Networking industry over the past year (-22.5% vs. -24%). The Zacks analyst believes that Cisco is benefiting from solid security business. Increasing demand for collaborative solutions, which includes Webex Teams, post the coronavirus outbreak is positive.

Moreover, a strong uptake of Catalyst 9000 family of switches and Nexus 9K solutions is a key catalyst. Integration with Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and Amazon Web Services is expected to fortify footprint in the cloud space.

Despite a grim third-quarter fiscal 2020 outlook, the company’s differentiated end-to-end approach across the network, cloud and endpoints is likely to be a key catalyst for the rest of fiscal 2020. However, lower customer spending, China-related weakness, and a growing global economic uncertainty due to the unabated spread of coronavirus are major headwinds.

Shares of Abbott have gained +9.4% over the past six months against the Zacks Medical Products industry’s fall of -5.7%. The Zacks analyst believes that Abbott’s Core Laboratory Diagnostics, cardiovascular and neuromodulation sales were significantly down in the first quarter of 2020 due to low demand in the past few months.

With the healthcare industry shifting its focus to control the coronavirus-led damage, Abbott has witnessed its molecular diagnostics and nutrition businesses putting up impressive performance during this period. The company launched three back-to-back diagnostic tests for covid-19.

Meanwhile, Abbott exited the first quarter of 2020 with better-than-expected earnings and revenue numbers. In the quarter, Abbott registered strong and consistent performance within EPD and Medical Devices segments. Abbott has been in news within Diabetic Care on growth with FreeStyle Libre.

NextEra’s shares have lost -13.4% over the past three months against the Zacks Electric Power industry’s fall of -15.9%. The Zacks analyst believes that the company is poised to benefit from the ongoing investments. Its “30 by 30” plan will help it meet the goal of making the generation portfolio cleaner.

The $50-$55B investment through 2022 will add more clean power generation units, and strengthen its infrastructure. The company has enough liquidity to counter the challenges posed by COVID-19. NextEra continued with its capital projects amid this crisis.

However, its nature of business is subject to complex and comprehensive federal, state and other regulations. If the planned nuclear plant outages last longer or an unplanned outage occurs, the company’s normal operations and profitability might be hindered.

Other noteworthy reports we are featuring today include Gilead Sciences and Edwards Lifesciences.

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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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