12:15 PM EDT, 03/24/2026 (MT Newswires) -- CFRA, an independent research provider, has provided MT Newswires with the following research alert. Analysts at CFRA have summarized their opinion as follows:

We raise our target price to $125 from $122, 19.5x our 2027 EPS estimate, a discount to ABT's historical forward average. We raise our 2026 EPS forecast to $5.76 from $5.68 and our 2027 EPS estimate to $6.26 from $6.16. Despite doubts about ABT's ability to successfully close the large $21 billion Exact Sciences Corporation (EXAS) acquisition due to regulatory risks and valuation, the company announced the shareholders approval of the merger on Friday. After this important vote, ABT was able to successfully close the deal yesterday, while EXAS ceased to trade as a stand-alone company on Nasdaq and became a fully owned subsidiary of ABT. We think this deal enables ABT to establish itself as a leading player in the rapidly growing and already vast cancer screening and diagnostics market. According to the NIH, in 2025 approximately 2 million people were diagnosed with cancer in the U.S. and by 2050, new cancer cases per year is expected to rise by 33 million globally.