Here's Why You Should Add Abaxis (ABAX) To Your Portfolio

Abaxis, Inc. (NASDAQ:ABAX) has been gaining investor confidence on consistently positive results. Over the past six months, the company’s share price has outperformed its industry. The stock has gained 67.8% compared with 7.7% growth recorded by the industry. Also, the company has outperformed the S&P 500’s 1.4% increase.

This renowned manufacturer of portable Medical (human) and Veterinary (animal) blood analysis systems that provide clinicians with rapid blood constituent measurements in medical and veterinarian markets worldwide has a market cap of $1.90 billion. The company’s historical five-year growth rate is favorable at 9.6% compared with the industry’s 7.1%.

With solid prospects, this Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) stock is an attractive pick for investors at the moment.

The company’s estimate revision trend for the current year has been positive. In the past 60 days, one analyst revised estimates upward, with no movement in the opposite direction. Resultantly, earnings estimates increased around 2.8% to $1.48 per share.

Per our Style Score, Abaxis sports a Growth Score of B, which is reflective of the company’s strong prospects. Our research shows that stocks with a Growth Style Score of A or B, when combined with a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) or 2, offer the best upside potential.

Let’s find out whether the recent positive trend is a sustainable one.

Solid Veterinary Business Performance

Within Animal Health, Abaxis exhibited strong consumable growth in the last reported quarter. Within the consumable product line, total rotor revenues improved. Hematology reagents and rapid assays also drove consumable revenues. With solid contributions from FLEX4 Rapid assay, heartworm, feline parvo and test for canine specific lipase, revenues from rapid assay were major contributors to the top line.

Product Launches Boost Growth

We are encouraged to note that the company is emphasizing on product innovation through research and development. Abaxis has been gaining encouraging response for its latest products like the urine sediment analyzer and FLEX4 Rapid assay. Notably, in January, the company received an approval from USDA, Center for Veterinary Biologics, for the VetScan FLEX4 Rapid Test. Within the veterinary business instrument product line, Abaxis recently introduced urine sediment and urine chemistry analyzers.

The company has also launched a VetScan SA urine sediment analyzer recently and sold 177 units of the product by the quarter-end. Further, Abaxis plans to connect SA urine sediment analyzer with the newly-launched VetScan UA by the end of the first quarter of fiscal 2019. This apart, these sediment analyzers will be connected with the VetScan FUSE later in 2018. Per management, addition of these products looks promising for the long haul.

Impressive Potential for Piccolo Placements

Abaxis’ Piccolo system is a portable, multiple routine test capability on whole blood, serum or plasma samples. The company develops, manufactures and sells the Piccolo Xpress chemistry analyzer for use in human patient care to provide clinicians with rapid blood constituent measurements.

To date, Abaxis’ Piccolo is the only point-of-care technology that can deliver comprehensive diagnostic grade chemistry results within the 15-minute visit window that retailers target. The company is successfully selling Piccolo instruments globally. On a global basis, Abaxis sold 189 Piccolos in fourth-quarter fiscal 2018 compared with 212 a year ago.

Other Key Picks

Other top-ranked stocks in the broader medical space are Genomic Health (NASDAQ:GHDX) , Abiomed (NASDAQ:ABMD) and Stryker Corporation (NYSE:SYK) .

Genomic Health has an expected earnings growth rate of 187.5% for the current quarter. The stock sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Abiomed has a projected long-term earnings growth rate of 27% and a Zacks Rank of 1.

Stryker has a projected long-term earnings growth rate of 9.7%. The stock carries a Zacks Rank of 2.

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