New Buy – Bad Timing

new buy

New Buy – Bad Timing

Hey everyone. Hope life has continued to treat you great. Today I am writing you in regards to the newest purchase in our dividend portfolio.

I made the purchase on Friday and was thrilled with the buy and then Tuesday came around and now I’m happy but also kind of questioning it. Things have changed quite a bit in only a couple days…….

The Purchase

On Friday I decided to increase our position in Abbvie. (A massive pharmaceutical company) Early Friday the stock dropped to around 75 bucks but then started rebounding. I placed a order mid day to buy 15 shares at $76.95.

This buy added $64.20 to our forward dividends and brought our overall holding of Abbvie to 49 shares.

I bought because I continued to believe in their pipeline of drugs to fill the void that Humira’s revenue declines will create. Now I’m starting to wonder if management knows something that we don’t.

What Changed?

Most likely you have heard the news. Tuesday morning my twitter, facebook and yahoo finance were full of Abbvie talk. AbbVie would acquire Allergan Plc for about $63 billion. I really don’t like these massive acquisitions and have seen a bunch of different stocks tank after announcing deals like this. Well Abbvie’s stock price dropped %16.25 the day they announced this.

Arg why didn’t I wait to buy today? Haha you can’t time the market…. But I really wonder if I would of decided to purchase them after this dip.

I understand management is feeling the pressure to replace the income that Humira has been making and with patent protection expiring in 2023 for the United States something needed to happen. I was hoping the 2 drugs with great potential – Upadacitinib and Skyrizi would get approval and fill the void. But maybe management isn’t as confident after striking a deal to buy Allergan.

Allergan holders will receive 0.8660 AbbVie shares and $120.30 in cash for each share they hold. AbbVie will also take on Allergan’s debt, which totalled about $24 billion at the end of the first quarter.

More debt on the balance sheet….. and a lot of new shares issued.




Diversify

This deal definitely helps fix the number one problem everyone has been talking about. Their reliance on Humira, Which generated sales of nearly 20 billion last year or 60% of abbvies revenue.

Allergan markets a portfolio of leading brands and best-in-class products primarily focused on four key therapeutic areas including medical aesthetics, eye care, central nervous system and Gastroenterology.(source – allergan website)

They are probably best known for botox though.

The deal still needs approval from  regulators, but I think it should go through and is expected to close in 2020

How About that Dividend?

Stock price is kind of short term noise. I’m a dividend investor. Abbvie has been a great dividend growth company since it’s spin off of Abbott in 2013. Now there is a little worry in my head about what will happen moving forward…. Will the dividend still be safe? What about that dividend growth? On the conference call they reiterated the deal will help with dividend growth going forward. I’m not expecting those double digit increases though…

I have seen both General Mills and Cvs freeze their dividend after big acquisitions (Blue buffalo for general mills and Aetna for cvs) to help reduce their debt load.

Management has mentioned how they want to lower their debt levels by 15-18 billion by the end of 2021. Hopefully they will continue to increase their divided as well going forward.

Conclusion

This is a pretty huge acquisition. There is both positives and negatives to this deal. Are you a glass half full or half empty kind of person? While I could of gotten a better deal if I waited a couple more days before the purchase (2 more shares) who knew it was coming? You cant win them all!

At the end of the day we added 15 more shares and bumped those dividend’s up by $64.20. Not bad…

I have debated selling some of my cisco position and locking in a 85% gain and moving them over to Abbvie but for now I’ll just sit back and watch what happens. If its anything like GIS and CVS (after their acquisition or pending acquisition) the stock price will stay sideways for awhile.

What are your thoughts on this purchase and acquisition? Are you backing up the truck on the dip or staying away?

cheers!

20 Responses

  1. May says:

    I almost pulled the trigger a few times. I was tempted after the huge price drop. But I am hesitating now. By the way, I have both General Mills and CVS, very bad feeling to see price drop and dividend frozen.

    • Rob says:

      hey May

      Its starting to grow on me, hopefully they dont go full blown acquisition mode and focus on that debt. WBA had great results today and posted a earnings beat, that may be good news for cvs. I may need to dollar cost average cvs down a bit.

      Did you buy magna? Its rebounded a bit but I may start a position this month if it stays around these levels.
      All the best May
      cheers

  2. Connie says:

    I work in the pharmaceutical industry, it is very turbulent and is up and down all the time. They’re always hiring / laying off, merging and acquiring, buying up other company’s products or trying to offload their failing ones. I will never buy stocks in this industry.

    • Rob says:

      hey Connie

      Always great to hear from people who work in the fields. That’s very interesting. Would you touch jnj or is that a no go as well? I agree though, big moves all the time. Things can change quickly, especially if America changes their policies.

      Cheers Connie!

  3. PCI –

    First, don’t sweat the merger. You couldn’t time that. However, you have to be okay with potentially not seeing a dividend increase. You know? A lot of cash and a lot of debt…

    • Rob says:

      A couple days ago I hated the merger more than today. Its starting to grow on me. Hopefully they knock that debt down though. A freeze may not be a bad idea and im happy with my 5.5% yield on cost.

      cheers guys

  4. Passive Cash says:

    Not too thrilled with the news. I share the same views. I don’t like the mega mergers. Would much prefer ABBV pursue a smaller company with a strong pipeline full of potential. AGN, from what I read, doesn’t have that. I’m tempted to add more at this price, but it requires a full re-evaluation of the company. The price is very cheap for the ABBV we knew…but it will be a different company post merger.
    Sorry about the poor timing :/

    • Rob says:

      Hey passive

      ahhh timing sucks, but just reinstates my belief that you cant time it!

      Yeah I agree smaller acquisitions seem better but at least they got agn a hell of a lot cheaper than went pfizer tried to buy them a couple years ago!

      Post merger will be a even better company with less reliance on humira and very diversified across health fields. Hopefully they knock that debt down before the next buy though.

      cheers!

  5. Dividend Daze says:

    I ended up picking up a few shares myself after the announcement. Hard to resist the dividend over 6% right now. Not a huge fan of the acquisition but I will wait and see how it goes for them. I wasn’t a fan of the GIS one either originally but since then the stock has rebounded pretty well and their pet food division is doing the best out of anything. Will be interesting to watch it over the coming months.

    • Rob says:

      hey Daze

      Nice buy man, way to lower your dollar costs average of abbvie down a tonne. Yeah the 6% plus yield is pretty huge. The more I read about the acquisition the more I’m warming up to it.

      Hate the added debtload though. The blue buffalo buy by general mills I was a fan of since I feed my dog blue buffalo.

      cheers man, hope life’s been great

  6. DivHut says:

    No biggie. We all know that timing a “perfect” buy or sell is impossible. Who would know about that announcement and who could know how it would treat the price. No worries. I am sure the price will climb back towards your buy price and long term it wouldn’t matter. That ABBV sale surprised us all and many in the DGI space took advantage of adding either before or after the announcement simply because the stock is a great potential long term pick.

    • Rob says:

      hey hut

      So true, Its already almost at my buy price. I look forward to see what management continues to do.
      cheers man

  7. Doug says:

    It’s already started to climb back up that’s a good thing but I think it will stay under 80.00 a share for awhile. They have an aggressive plan to pay off 21 billion in debt by 2023 so that will help. When it gets approved this will drop Humara to 40 percent of the profits so when the patent dies expire and generics cone online it won’t hurt as bad and other drugs will help pick up slack. I imagine that dividend growth will slow for a few years then pick back up after some debt is paid down. I was able to pick up some shares on the drop. Wasn’t planning on it but couldn’t resist. When it goes back up to $100.00 a share your buy price won’t matter much.

    • Rob says:

      haha

      Well so far you ahve been right. No question the diversity is a nice thing. It has rebounded nicely already. Ill continue to hold my shares and see what happens with the debt reduction in the future.

      nice buy Doug, cheers!

  8. German says:

    Oh man that’s a bummer, but you possibly would not have known about the acquisition. The stock will rebound but it will take some time. It’s like the Altagas. They did a massive acquisition and took too much debt. The market didn’t like it and the stock sunk from 25 to 12. Now it’s back up to 20 bucks again. Are you thinking of buying more shares on the dip?

    • Rob says:

      hey German

      It actually has almost rtecovered the whole dip already. Guess i should of taken advantage. All good. Alta seems to be making good progress but no its not on the top of my list. Gonna try to stick to the bluechips, atleast for now
      cheers man

  9. This is another one of those “cult” stocks among DGI investors (similar to O)…seems like everyone owns it or is buying it…

    Hope it works out! Happy Canada Day!

    • Rob says:

      haha I guess its true

      Man do I regret no buying O at around the 45-50$ mark. I was actually debating using our line of credit back then.

      Ahh well, it happens
      cheers Man

  10. Hey Rob,

    I wouldn’t sweat it too much, i think we have all had bad timing with a stock at one point or another. Mine was Suncor, bought it and dropped over 4% within two days.

    All the best!

    Brian

    • Rob says:

      Thanks Brian
      Yeah could of gotten a extra share or 2 but its rebounded so much already would of needed idle cash to take advantage of it.

      cheers man

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