Market Update: Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) – Johnson & Johnson to cut about 3000 jobs

[AAP] – Johnson & Johnson plans to cut about 3000 jobs over the next two years as the health care conglomerate works to restructure its medical devices business. The New Brunswick, New Jersey, company said that amounts to more than two per cent of its global workforce of around 127,000 people and four to six per cent of its employee total in medical devices. “These actions recognise the changing needs of the global medical device market,” said Gary Pruden, chairman of Johnson & Johnson’s medical device unit, in a statement. Read more on this. Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) , with a current value of $269.78B, started trading this morning at $97.93. During today’s session, JNJ traded between $96.90 to $98.41 and has traded between $81.79 and $105.49 over the past year. JNJ shares are currently priced at 15.70x this year’s forecasted earnings, which makes them relatively expensive compared to the industry’s -2.14x earnings multiple. And for dividend hunters, the company pays shareholders $3.00 per share annually in dividends, yielding 3.03%. Consensus earnings for the current quarter by the 20 sell-side analysts covering the stock is an estimate of $1.42 per share, which would be $0.05 better than the year-ago quarter and a $0.00 sequential decrease. The full-year EPS estimate is $6.18 which would be a $0.21 setback than last year’s full-year earnings. The quarterly earnings estimate is based on a consensus revenue forecast of the current quarter of $17.90 Billion. If realized, that would be a 1.92% decrease over the year-ago quarter. Recently, Barclays downgraded JNJ from Overweight to Equal Weight (Jan 10, 2014). Previously, RBC Capital Mkts upgraded JNJ from Sector Perform to Outperform. Given all the information above, we should disclose to readers that the average price target is $108.00, which is 10.28% above than it opened this morning. See more in (NYSE:JNJ) Similar Articles: Market Update: Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) – U.S. justices reject Johnson & Johnson unit’s anti-psychotic drug appeal Market Update: Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) – Johnson & Johnson to Participate in the 2015 Morgan Stanley Healthcare Conference Market Update: Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) – Johnson & Johnson Announces Quarterly Dividend for Third Quarter 2015