👋 A concept not followed through by many is to consider the long-term viability of any company they deal with. This is of particular interest to those of us who receive life-support in the form of Dialysis from a profit-seeking company such as Fresenius Medical (ticker FMS.) Because I have physical skin in the game, i.e., my continued good health and actual survival, on 1/20/2023, I purchased 500 shares of FMS at $18.27 per share, for a total investment of $18.27 x 500 = $9,135.00. Today, some three months plus later, this investment is trading at $21.21/share, for a total of $10,605.00 for a gain of $1,475.00 as it is trading and trending today. The stock has a 52-week high of $34.65 so it has lots of room to run.
Obviously, this is not an enticement for ANYONE reading this post to invest in FMS. I did, and this is the result. Tomorrow it could go South and your investment with it. However, MorningStar, Danelfin, and others are rating it as a buy.
One metric that I was taught to inspect when evaluating a company is its sales per employee. This is a metric that can easily be compared across companies competing in a given marketplace. For FMS, this metric is for 2022 – the most recent year for which data is available $155,200/employee, which is pretty good. Typically the oil industry had some of the highest sales/employee and restaurants have some of the lowest. Another metric to look at is sales/patient, which is $56,230. This should be compared with Davita and others competing in the same market place which is beyond the intent of this blog entry.
The bottom line for me is that it looks like FMS will be around for a while to take care of my needs, perhaps in a small way both financially and medically.
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