Cramer's Morning Take: Abbott Labs 5/29/24

Jim Cramer (0:01)

Jim Cramer here to share with you a sample of my take on the market from today's CNBC Investing Club morning meeting. This morning, when we got a nine to one down, the late Mark Haynes, and I don't know how many of you were able to watch Mark, but Mark, particularly at the beginning of when I moved over, did a huge amount of charting, a huge amount of work on individual stocks. At that point, he was allowed to own individual stocks, and it really did encourage him.

And he always said to me, Jim, if there's one thing that is certain, at nine to one, you buy. And he always put it the same way. You find something. And I think that we have been true to Mark's words this morning.

Jeff Marks (0:40)

Yeah, I think we've been true to his words for many, many years. But yeah, this morning, we added to Abbott Labs, which is obviously, like healthcare, very out of favor.

Abbott Labs out of favor, company-specific issue.

Jim Cramer (0:53)

Because of a tangential tie-up with J&J, J&J has a massive number of lawsuits. This is a very small number.

And I think that all drug firms at one time or another are faced with what Abbott is, but where J&J is very special.

Jeff Marks (1:09)

Right, that's J&J is talc, Abbott is baby formula, which is a medical need. It's a prescription, but this is a failure-to-warn situation resulting back to a loss by Reckitt Ben Keeser.

Jim Cramer (1:22)

Which is not as good a company as we're sure.

Jeff Marks (1:25)

But, no, not at all. But Abbott, I mean, one of the fastest growing companies in all of MedTech, 10.8% growth organically, sales in the first quarter.

Not a lot of non-AI plays that are posting double-digit growth like that for a company of this size.

Jim Cramer (1:40)

Exactly right.

Jeff Marks (1:40)

$175 billion market cap, great balance sheet, really high quality. It's out of favor.

We have the overhang, but those are more temporary issues. So we're just slowly building that position.

Jim Cramer (1:52)

Yeah, look, there's no hurry. We do think that they could lose the first case.

It would not be unusual to lose one or two and then just, you know, bring the first one in.

Jeff Marks (2:01)

But once you get some wins and the ball starts rolling, you might have a lot of...

Jim Cramer (2:04)

Right, the plaintiffs wanted to be in Missouri because Missouri is the worst state in the union for defense.

And then they hope to bring out more plaintiffs so they can find them, but there aren't a lot of, sadly, it's like anyone who dies, and you know, because they work, chairman of the Baby Heart Fund, Gala at Columbia, that any child dies, just terrible. But there are situations where this milk is, the Abbott milk has to be used. And there are gonna be situations where something goes wrong. And that's just a terrible thing, but it does happen.

Jeff Marks (2:38)

Yeah, absolutely.

Jim Cramer (2:39)

That's one of the reasons why we feel that it's an aberration about those who've died versus J&J, where there's plenty of evidence that maybe they do. Join the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer to catch my member exclusive warning minis every day at 10:20 a.m. Visit cnbc.com/morningtake to become a member today. That's one word, morning take.

SPEAKER_3 (3:06)

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