Topic: How To Invest

Wall Street Stock Forecaster Hotline – Friday, December 15, 2017

Article Excerpt

3M COMPANY, $238.00, New York symbol MMM, makes over 60,000 consumer and industrial goods, including Post-It notes, Scotch tape, Scotch-Brite cleaning products, Scotchguard fabric protection and Thinsulate insulation. The company has agreed to sell most of its Communication Markets Division to Corning Inc. (New York symbol GLW). That business makes fibre-optic and copper cables. When it completes the transaction in 2018, 3M will receive $900 million. The sale will also generate a one-time gain of $0.40 a share. To put those figures in context, the company earned $1.4 billion, or $2.33 a share, in the third quarter of 2017. 3M also announced that it expects its sales from ongoing operations, and excluding currency rates, to rise 3% to 5% in 2018. It also expects to earn between $9.60 and $10.00 a share next year. The stock trades at 24.3 times the midpoint of that range. That’s a reasonable multiple considering the company spends a high 6% of its revenue on research. OUR RECOMMENDATION: 3M…