Baxter expands its product line

Article Excerpt

BAXTER INTERNATIONAL INC. $50 (New York symbol BAX; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 543.9 million; Market cap: $27.2 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.7; Dividend yield: 1.1%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.baxter. com) will buy the injectable medicines business of India’s Claris Life sciences. Those operations make drugs for anesthesia, anti-infection and renal (kidney) treatments. The company will pay $625 million when it completes the purchase later this year. The new operations will add $100 million to its annual revenue. Demand for injectable drugs continues to grow 10% each year. That should help offset slower sales of Baxter’s other medical devices. Its overall revenue rose 1.9%, to $10.2 billion in 2016 from $10.0 billion in 2015. Thanks to better efficiency, earnings jumped 42.0%, to $1.96 from $1.38. Baxter is a buy. buy…