AstraZeneca is a British-Swedish company with its main headquarters in the U.K. and regional headquarters in Sweden and the U.S. It focuses on treatments for respiratory, autoimmune, and metabolic conditions, as well as on cardiology, neurology, and oncology drugs.

Stocks are deeply in the red at midday on Friday, as the good news/bad news battle is again in play. It's hard to not like the payrolls data that was reported this AM, as the number of new jobs created in the U.S. blew away expectations. But the flipside argument, which is winning the day so far, is that a solid employment picture makes the likelihood of an interest-rate cut very low. Indeed, a possible rate hike is capturing the headlines, and leading to equity market agita. Other notable events include the continued selling in Broadcom and peers, the price of Bitcoin falling hard and fast, and the soon to be crowning of the world's first trillionare in the form of Elon Musk. A busy day indeed, leading to a 10% spike in the VIX volatility index.

A merger between Astra of Sweden and Zeneca of the United Kingdom formed AstraZeneca in 1999. The firm sells branded drugs across a number of major therapeutic areas, including oncology (over 40% of total revenue), cardiovascular, renal, and metabolic (over 20%), rare disease (16%), and respiratory and immunology (15%). The majority of sales comes from international markets, with the United States representing close to one-third of its sales.

Argus is hosting a five-part webinar series on AI. Our first webinar was on AI and IT, and our most-recent event was on AI and Healthcare. Still to come are webinars on AI and the Consumer Sectors (April 1); AI and Financial Services (May 6); and AI and Industrial/Energy (June 3). In our recent webinar, we noted that Healthcare companies are using AI to improve research, surgeries, drug development, best practices, and other health-related enhancements. During the webinar, we were asked which Healthcare companies have strong records of innovation and are embracing breakthroughs in AI - and the following is a list of those companies, as we see it. They are all rated BUY at Argus.