While income investors constantly seek out stocks with growing dividend yields, they can also benefit from share buybacks. The share buybacks present an opportunity for investors to get capital gains in addition to current income. Currently, 80% of S&P 500 companies are buying back shares. Combine this with dividend yield and you can get a total yield of greater than 10% in 2014. We are presenting a series of stocks worth a look.
Pfizer (PFE) has a projected share buyback yield of 14% and a current dividend yield of 3.49%. This provides investor a potential for a total yield of 18.2%. The stock has a 12 month price target of $33.
Investors were pleased to hear that the company intends to increase its dividend payout ratio to 40% (from 33%) by the end of 2013. The company returned about $15 billion to shareholders in the form of dividends and share buybacks in 2012. Pfizer intends to use the proceeds from the sale of the Nutrition business on additional share repurchases and other value creating opportunities.
On 7/30/2013, the Board of Directors authorized a new$10 billion share repurchase program to be utilized over time. This new program is in addition to the$3.1 billion of authorization currently remaining under the previous share repurchase program.
Pfizer posted second quarter 2013 earnings of $0.56 per share, 5% below the year-ago earnings. Revenues, which fell 7% to $12.9 billion, missed the Consensus Estimate of $13.1 billion. Revenue growth was impacted by the loss of exclusivity of certain products and purchasing patterns for Prevnar/Prevenar in some markets. Pfizer maintained its outlook for 2013. Revenues will be hit by genericization and the expiration of a few co-promotion agreements. The company s pipeline needs to deliver given the Lipitor loss of exclusivity and the upcoming loss of exclusivity on additional products in the next few years.
We expect revenues in 2013 to decline about 12%, primarily reflecting the classification of the animal health business (divested in June 2013) as a discontinued operation. We also project lower sales of established drugs, largely due to ongoing generic erosion in off-patent Lipitor, Detrol and Xalatan, as well as the expiration of certain co-promotion agreements. However, we project continued gains in Lyrica muscle pain therapy and Celebrex arthritis treatment. We also forecast good growth from emerging markets, new oncology agents such as Xalkori and Inlyta, and from the recent launches of Xeljanz and Eliquis.
In July 2013, PFE announced plans to internally separate into three distinct business segments, two innovative units and one value business. The first innovative unit will comprise drugs with patent exclusivities beyond 2015. The second innovative segment will include vaccines, oncology agents, and consumer healthcare. The third value unit will consist of mature drugs, and joint venture products. We believe the new structure should provide investors greater transparency of PFE’s different businesses, and represents a prelude for a potential eventual split-up of Pfizer into three separate firms.
