Rothschild & Co upgraded Abbott Laboratories to Buy this morning, lifting its target to $127 from $119. The stock trades at $96.69, implying 31% upside to the new target. The timing matters: earnings are due October 14, just twelve days away.
The Rothschild move adds to a crowded bull camp. TD Cowen has a $135 target and reiterated Buy in September. Wolfe Research upgraded to Outperform in August with a $130 target. Citigroup raised its target to $125 in August. JP Morgan, Wells Fargo and Piper Sandler all raised targets in July after the Q2 beat. The consensus is Buy, with an average target of $120.26.
The bullish case rests on diversification and execution. Abbott reported comparable sales growth of 4.8% on $12.59 billion of revenue in Q2. It raised 2026 EPS guidance to $5.45 to $5.60. Management sees high-single-digit organic revenue growth and double-digit EPS growth extending into 2027, supported by a pipeline that includes Volt 2.0, TactiFlex Duo, Libre Duo and Amulet 360.
The bear case is not absent. Bears point to pricing pressure in Nutrition and Medical Devices, regulatory timing risk, and a growth story that depends on multiple engines firing simultaneously. The Exact Sciences acquisition closed in March and is accretive, but critics argue the benefit may simply offset structural softness elsewhere.
The gap between where analysts are pointing and where the stock sits is worth noting. Abbott has fallen 12.4% over the past month and 4.3% over the past week. It now trades at $96.69, well below the levels where CEO Robert Ford sold in late August, at $115.57 and $116.19. As covered in the previous note, those sales were not under a pre-arranged 10b5-1 plan. The 90-day insider net across all transaction types remains around negative $46.9M, though most of that reflects compensation-linked option exercises rather than pure conviction selling.
Short interest at 1.15% of free float is near multi-month lows. It is not a story in its own right at this level. The cost to borrow has risen sharply in percentage terms, from 0.18% to 0.68% over the past week, but in absolute terms it remains well below 1%. Availability is effectively unconstrained.
The put-to-call ratio sits at 0.59, slightly below its 20-day average of 0.61. Options positioning is neither extreme nor directionally notable.
The October 14 print will either validate the analyst consensus or widen the divergence further. Wikipedia attention for Abbott registered a z-score of 2.05 against its own prior 90 days as of September 19, which reflects elevated retail interest but is not a revenue indicator. Factor scores show the analyst recommendation differential ranks in the 94th percentile, consistent with the breadth of bullish coverage.
Data summary
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