Wednesday, May 6, 2020

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 Merck (MRK), PayPal (PYPL) and Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A). 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 >>>

Merck’s shares have underperformed the Zacks Large Cap Pharmaceuticals industry over the past year (-0.2% vs. +11.1%). The Zacks analyst believes that drugs like Keytruda, Lynparza and Bridion are driving sales. Keytruda sales are gaining from continued uptake in lung cancer and increasing usage in other cancer indications.

Animal health and vaccine products remain core growth drivers. The potential separation into two companies makes strategic sense as the remaining Merck should be able to achieve higher profits than the combined company. 

However, Merck expects the COVID-related business disruptions to hurt sales in its Pharmaceuticals as well as Animal Health units in 2020. Meanwhile, generic competition for several drugs and rising competitive pressure, mainly on the diabetes franchise will continue to be overhangs on the top line.

(You can read the full research report on Merck here >>>)

Shares of PayPal have gained 27.2% over the past six months against the Zacks Internet Software industry’s rise of 18.9%. The Zacks analyst believes that robust mobile checkout services of One Touch are contributing to the company’s total payment volume growth. Growing momentum across core peer to peer is also aiding in acceleration of payment volume.

PayPal’s portfolio strength remains its key catalyst. Venmo’s improving monetization efforts and rising adoption rate across various platforms are aiding total active accounts. Additionally, the company is benefiting from well-performing core PayPal and Braintree. Positive contributions from Hyperwallet buyout are tailwinds.

However, eBay’s managed payments transition remains a concern. Moreover, declining eBay volume remains a headwind for the company’s TPV. Moreover, PayPal anticipates Honey and GoPay buyouts to limit earnings growth in 2020.

(You can read the full research report on PayPal here >>>)

Royal Dutch Shell’s shares have lost 37.9% over the past three months against the Zacks International Integrated Oil industry’s fall of 30.3%. The Zacks analyst believes that the company's position as a key supplier of LNG should benefit its long-term cash flow growth on the back of attractive growth opportunities.

Royal Dutch Shell’s Q1 earnings beat was overshadowed by its historic dividend cut. While Europe's largest oil company surpassed profit expectations on higher LNG sales volumes, the commodity price collapse forced the supermajor to trim its payout for the first time since World War II.

Shell is also making solid progress toward the transition to a renewable energy-focused future. But there are worries over the company’s drop in upstream production and its poor reserve replacement ratio.  

(You can read the full research report on Royal Dutch Shell here >>>)

Other noteworthy reports we are featuring today include BlackRock (BLK), ServiceNow (NOW) and General Electric (GE).

Today's Best Stocks from Zacks

Would you like to see the updated picks from our best market-beating strategies? From 2017 through 2019, while the S&P 500 gained and impressive +53.6%, five of our strategies returned +65.8%, +97.1%, +118.0%, +175.7% and even +186.7%.

This outperformance has not just been a recent phenomenon. From 2000 – 2019, while the S&P averaged +6.0% per year, our top strategies averaged up to +54.7% per year.

See their latest picks free >>

Mark Vickery
Senior Editor

Note: Sheraz Mian heads the Zacks Equity Research department and is a well-regarded expert of aggregate earnings. He is frequently quoted in the print and electronic media and publishes the weekly Earnings Trends and Earnings Preview reports. If you want an email notification each time Sheraz publishes a new article, please click here>>>