In mid-2026, Abbott Laboratories is trading around $88 per share —roughly one-fifth below its annual high and near its 52-week low of $81.97—even though the company’s fundamentals have essentially remained unchanged. The 52-week range extends from a low of $81.97 to a high of $139.06. The company has just completed its largest acquisition in more than a decade (Exact Sciences, $23 billion enterprise value), holds over 56% of the global continuous glucose monitoring market, is showing double-digit growth momentum in medical devices, and is a “dividend king” with more than half a century of uninterrupted dividend growth. The gap between operational reality and market valuation is precisely what makes ABT interesting right now.

The investment thesis is simple at its core but complicated in the details: the market is punishing Abbott for a combination of temporary issues (a weak respiratory season in diagnostics, the winding down of the COVID business, soft nutrition, earnings dilution from…