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Here's Why You Should Retain IQVIA Holdings (IQV) Stock For Now

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IQVIA Holdings Inc. (IQV - Free Report) has an impressive Growth Score of A. This style score condenses all the essential metrics from a company’s financial statements to get a true sense of quality and sustainability of its growth.

The company has an expected long-term earnings per share (three to five years) growth rate of 12.9%. Further, earnings are anticipated to register growth of 35.4% and 14.5% in 2021 and 2022, respectively.

IQVIA’s shares have gained a massive 76.8% over the past year against 14% decline of the industry it belongs to.

Factors that Bode Well

IQVIA’s enormous treasure trove of information is a distinguishing asset and perhaps a big barrier to entry for competitors. The company has a huge collection of healthcare information that encompasses more than one billion comprehensive, longitudinal, non-identified patient records across sales, prescription and promotional data, electronic medical records, medical claims, genomics, and social media. Its burgeoning information set contains around 45 petabytes of proprietary data sourced from around 150,000 data suppliers, and covers more than one million data feeds globally. IQVIA’s unique ability to standardize, organize and integrate this information through applying sophisticated analytics and global technology infrastructure helps it grow its client base.

IQVIA’s addressable market size is around $260 billion and consists of outsourced research and development, real-world evidence and connected health, and technology-enabled clinical and commercial operations markets. The company aims to expand and penetrate these markets through innovating and improving its offerings using its information, advanced analytics, transformative technology and significant domain expertise.

Debt Woes Stay

IQVIA’s cash and cash equivalent balance of $2.31 billion at the end of the first-quarter 2021 was well below the long-term debt level of $12.1 billion, underscoring that the company does not have enough cash to meet this debt burden. The cash level, however, can meet the short-term debt of $144 million.

Zacks Rank and Stocks to Consider

IQVIA currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Some top-ranked Business Services stocks are Accenture (ACN - Free Report) , Cross Country Healthcare (CCRN - Free Report)  and ManpowerGroup (MAN - Free Report) , each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

The long-term expected earnings per share (three to five years) growth rate for Accenture, Cross Country Healthcare and ManpowerGroup is pegged at 10%, 10.5% and 23.11%, respectively.

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