Feeling Good: The 10 Best-Selling Medical Companies and Brands in the World
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Every day we wake up whole and healthy is a day to be grateful for. This universal truth applies to us all, no matter how rich or poor, what sex or gender, where we live, or what we do for a living. That’s why the healthcare industry has continuously registered such strong performance in the financial markets – we just can’t do without the services they provide especially considering the fact that we increasingly rely on medication to keep our bodies running efficiently as we strive to maximize our life-spans.
For this reason among others, you shouldn’t be surprised to find healthcare stocks to be among the most stable and well-performing holdings in many investors’ portfolios. Massive healthcare conglomerates have interests in all aspects of the healthcare provision chain, starting from running clinics, manufacturing medication, all the way to providing health insurance covers.
Companies that have been attached to the old way of conducting their business have had to undergo a change in how they approach today’s market, and some have weathered the storms of change more successfully than others. Here’s a quick look at the top performers in the healthcare sector for the year 2018.
Let’s do it.
Express Scripts Holding
Revenues of $101.8 billion is enough to get you onto this very exclusive list, and that’s what Express Scripts, the country’s largest manager of pharmacy benefits, managed to rake in last year.
Cardinal Health
The company that deals with drugs, gloves, surgical apparel, catheters, stents, as well as its mainstay, drugs, recently showed a significant burst of productivity, reaching the $102 billion mark last year.
AmerisourceBergen
Trailing McKesson closely, this company ranks as the second largest pharmaceutical distributor in the United States. Generic drugs saw a dramatic increase in their values in the recent past, and this is what drove the company’s healthcare stocks to attain heights it had never reached before. Over $136 billion in revenues place it among the princes of the healthcare industry, and their good results are partially as a result of their partnership with Walgreens Boots. The latest news from the organization is that they’re heading into the animal health industry in search of even broader opportunity.
United Health Group
This conglomerate has managed the impressive feat of driving its revenues up by 20.4% back in 2016, to stand at an impressive $157 billion with in excess of 85 million patients on its books. The company’s CEO, Stephen Helms, has directed the company into the world of health services with the acquisition of Optum. This is a company (Optum) that’s equipped with pharmacy benefits management staff as well as numerous other functionaries tasked with handling the firm’s health data and analytics. The benefit of having such large numbers of manpower under one umbrella is that drug-price bargaining with large suppliers becomes relatively easy.
McKesson
Revenues of $181.2 billion for the year 2016 saw McKesson leapfrog a lot of its competition I the medical industry. It is one of the largest pharmaceutical distributors in the United State, with a significant share of the global trade especially after absorbing other distributors to become the mega-distributor that it is now. That aside, interests in software development and its application in the medical field such as in health planning, revenue collection, electronic health record systems, and such have seen them rated as one of the most valuable healthcare stocks to own.
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Pfizer
The $48.9 billion that Pfizer made from the sale of just one of its most popular drugs – Celebrex, tells us a lot about the cutting-edge efficiency of this global wholesaler of generic drugs.
Humana
A 12% rise in revenues to hit the $54.3 billion mark sees Humana make it to the top level of healthcare stocks, and this is only bound to get better once their anticipated merger with fellow multi-drug dealing giant Aetna is finalized. This should make for one of the hottest healthcare stocks to hit the market in quite some time.
Aetna
The company offering some of the most employee-friendly terms in the healthcare industry ($16 minimum wage) made away with revenues of $60 billion last year, although the Affordable Care Act might potentially affect its business model going forward.
Johnson & Johnson
This household name is a favorite all over the world for its wide range of brands such as baby powder and band-aids, and that’s how they managed to gather revenues in excess of 70.1 billion last year. Their talcum powder controversy, in which some people claimed that it was carcinogenic, seems to have fizzled out, leaving their future looking bright.
Anthem
Coming behind the United Health Group, this is the United State’s second-largest health insurer, with a revenue exceeding $79.2 billion this past year. Based in Indianapolis and formerly known as Wellpoint, they have seen constant and reliable growth over the years despite several challenges and setbacks befalling them specifically and the industry in general such as information leaks and increased competition. They remain one of the most reliable healthcare stocks to place your money on.
Author: Andrew Cioffi
