Abbott Laboratories (ABT) Stock Price & How to Invest

Abbott Laboratories is a global healthcare company headquartered in North Chicago, Illinois, that discovers, develops, manufactures, and sells health care products in more than 160 countries through four segments: Medical Devices, Diagnostic Products, Nutritional Products, and Established Pharmaceutical Products. Medical Devices, the largest segment at roughly $21.4 billion in 2025 revenue, includes the FreeStyle Libre family of continuous glucose monitors, structural heart products (Navitor, TriClip), electrophysiology systems (AVEIR leadless pacemaker), vascular devices, and heart-failure technologies. Diagnostics contributes roughly $8.9 billion, Nutrition roughly $8.5 billion (anchored by Similac infant formula and Ensure adult nutrition), and Established Pharmaceuticals roughly $5.5 billion in branded generics sold primarily in emerging markets.

Founded in 1888 by Dr. Wallace Calvin Abbott in Chicago, the company has spent more than a century reshaping itself through major transactions, including the 2017 acquisitions of Alere and St. Jude Medical that built its current devices leadership, the 2020 COVID-19 rapid-test windfall that swelled its diagnostics footprint, and the approximately $21 billion acquisition of Exact Sciences completed in early 2026 to expand into cancer diagnostics. Robert Ford, a company veteran, has served as chairman and chief executive officer since 2020 and has presided over the post-COVID pivot back to organic device and diagnostics growth. Abbott employs roughly 114,000 colleagues worldwide and is a member of the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats Index, having raised its annual dividend for more than 53 consecutive years.

The most acute near-term risk is infant formula litigation: juries have delivered verdicts including a $53 million compensatory award in late March 2026 and a separately upheld $495 million verdict, with hundreds of additional NEC-related cases still pending, and a securities class action filed in 2026 adds a parallel legal exposure track targeting alleged investor misstatements. Integration of the approximately $21 billion Exact Sciences acquisition introduces execution risk, short-term EPS dilution, and elevated SGA costs that compressed Q1 2026 operating earnings year over year. Foreign exchange headwinds have consistently shaved 2-3 percentage points off reported international revenue growth, and any meaningful dollar strengthening would pressure reported results disproportionately given Abbott's broad non-US exposure. Competitive disruption in continuous glucose monitoring from DexCom and emerging players, along with pricing pressure from government payers and the Inflation Reduction Act, represent structural long-term headwinds.

24 analysts publish price targets on ABT, averaging $118.42 against a $105.70 price as of August 2026, or +12.0%. The published targets run from $103.00 to $135.00, a narrow spread, and the ratings split 20 buy, 7 hold, 0 sell. Over the last six months there have been 6 raises and 2 cuts among the published actions. A price target is what an analyst published on a date, not a prediction, and sell-side ratings skew positive across the whole market.

Read the full ABT forecast and price target for the target table, the recent rating actions by firm, and how the consensus has shifted.

We give no verdict on Abbott Laboratories. Both cases are real, which is why the question is contested at all, so here is the strongest version of each.

The case for buying. FreeStyle Libre: A Platform, Not Just a Product. FreeStyle Libre exceeded $7.5 billion in 2025 annual sales and grew roughly 19-20% organically in H1 2025, making it the dominant revenue engine within Medical Devices. The most optimistic published target, $135.00, assumes this works close to its best case.

The case against. The most acute near-term risk is infant formula litigation: juries have delivered verdicts including a $53 million compensatory award in late March 2026 and a separately upheld $495 million verdict, with hundreds of additional NEC-related cases still pending, and a securities class action filed in 2026 adds a parallel legal exposure track targeting alleged investor misstatements. The most pessimistic target, $103.00, is roughly what ABT is worth if this bites instead.

Read the full bull and bear case on ABT, including what would have to change to break either one. Walnut is not an investment adviser.

A simple financial snapshot. These are approximations and refresh quarterly; for current figures see Abbott Laboratories's investor relations page or your broker.

• Revenue (TTM): ~$45.1 billion
• Revenue (FY 2025): ~$44.3 billion (+5.7% YoY)
• Net Income (FY 2025): ~$6.5 billion
• Net Profit Margin (FY 2025): ~14.7%
• Adjusted EPS Guidance (FY 2026): ~$5.38 to $5.58
• P/E Ratio (TTM, trailing GAAP): ~26x (approximately 26% below 10-year median of ~36x)
• Dividend (Annualized): $2.52 per share (~2.7% yield at recent prices)
• EBITDA (FY 2025): ~$11.2 billion

ABT's trailing GAAP P/E of roughly 26x sits below its own 3-year, 5-year, and 10-year historical averages, and is modestly above the Medical Devices and Instruments industry median of roughly 25x, suggesting the market has re-rated the stock from COVID-era growth-premium levels while still assigning a quality multiple. Revenue growth has remained consistently positive in the 5-7% range even as GAAP EPS was pressured in FY2025 by a year-over-year comparison that included elevated one-time items. The FY2026 adjusted EPS guidance of $5.38-$5.58 implies a forward adjusted P/E in the high-teens to low-twenties range at recent share prices, which analysts broadly describe as modestly discounted relative to fundamental fair value estimates.

If you want ABT exposure as part of a larger bundle rather than directly, these ETFs hold it meaningfully. Weights are approximate and refresh quarterly.

These are the investment theses ABT naturally fits into. Each links to a full theme guide listing every other stock that belongs and the ETFs commonly used as a passive proxy.

Other names that sit close to ABT: same theme, named as a direct competitor, or held beside it in the same funds. Each entry says which. Worth a look if you are thinking about diversification within a thesis rather than concentration on one ticker.

There are three common ways to get ABT exposure. Buy shares (or fractional shares) directly at any major broker. Hold an ETF that includes it (XLV, VHT), which spreads the position across many companies. Or build it into a focused thematic portfolio, so ABT sits alongside other stocks that express the same thesis.

Walnut takes the portfolio route. Describe a thesis where ABT fits (for example “AI infrastructure” or “dividend-growth large-caps”) and the AI proposes 5 to 6 constituents with target weights. You review the plan and fund it through your own broker when you're ready.

New to this? Start with how to invest in stocks, see how to analyze a stock with AI, or compare the best AI stock analyzers.

Abbott Laboratories today is best understood as a medical-devices-led compounder that generated ~$45.1 billion in trailing-twelve-month revenue (as of Q1 2026) and has grown sales roughly 6-7% per year, with the FreeStyle Libre franchise and a broadening cardiovascular lineup as the core growth drivers. If you believe that structural tailwinds in diabetes management, cardiovascular intervention, and cancer diagnostics (accelerated by the approximately $21 billion acquisition of Exact Sciences) will sustain mid-to-high single-digit organic growth, the question becomes sizing and overlap with other large-cap healthcare holdings, not timing; the risk is that infant formula NEC litigation, which has already produced verdicts in the hundreds of millions of dollars with many more cases pending, alongside integration execution risk from Exact Sciences, could weigh on capital allocation, sentiment, and management bandwidth for years.

Whether ABT is worth buying today depends more on your time horizon and what you already hold than on any single call. We walk through valuation, what would have to go right, and the risks in is ABT a buy or a sell?, and where the stock could go from here in the ABT stock forecast.

For income investors, whether ABT pays a dividend and how the payout looks is covered in does ABT pay a dividend? And to weigh ABT against a peer, read the full side-by-side comparisons: ABT vs JNJ and ABT vs ABBV.