Boston Scientific Corporation (BSX): Among the Innovative Healthcare Stocks to Watch in 2025
In the US, healthcare costs and prices have been increasing. According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, U.S. healthcare spending increased 7.5% from 2022 to $4.9 trillion in 2023. In 2023, the healthcare industry made up 17.6% of the US economy, an increase of 17.4% from 2022. The growth of Medicare and private health insurance is the two leading causes of this increase.
The impact of tariffs on this continuing trend has become a significant bone of contention in the healthcare industry as more and more US corporations turn to China for agreements on the next breakthrough chemical, whether in the areas of obesity or cancer. Carlo Rizzuto, managing director of Versant Ventures, spoke on CNBC's "Fast Money" on February 7 about the impact of tariffs on healthcare. Rizzuto says that tariffs may impact the sector in two ways. Products made in China and sold in the US or other countries would be the first. The industry would need to watch how the tariffs are used in the market to comprehend how they would impact such trade operations.
Second, and more precisely, the US healthcare industry relies heavily on China as a basis for contract production and research. Consequently, anything that raises that price is probably going to make the market more difficult. Cost hikes won't help the healthcare industry's management, which is already under pressure from investors.
Speaking on China's enormous impact in the pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors, Rizzuto said that the vast majority of healthcare companies use a Chinese CRO or manufacturing partner in some capacity during the research and development phase. As a result, it significantly affects how the nation's biotech and pharmaceutical industries function. This trend is rather common in businesses of all sizes.
In other words, the lack of infrastructure to facilitate the transfer prevents healthcare corporations from reshoring all of their externalized R&D and production to the United States. Therefore, it is hard to imagine how such a large-scale reshoring might occur. The amount of tariffs imposed can be used to determine the expenses of achieving this objective linearly.
According to McKinsey, healthcare EBITDA will rise from a starting point of $676 billion in 2023 to $987 billion in 2028 at a 7% CAGR. Recovery from post-pandemic lows is anticipated to spur progress in several areas, even though development is anticipated to be faster in some (such as specialized pharmacy and HST). Software platforms are essential to the healthcare ecosystem because they let payers and providers operate more effectively in a complex environment.
By automating procedures, fostering data connectivity, and producing actionable insights, technological innovation (such as generative AI and machine learning) keeps providing opportunities for stakeholders from all industries. McKinsey predicts that increased utilization and pipeline expansion (as in cancer) will result in a considerable increase in specialty pharmacy income. Specialty pharmacy profit pools are continuing to grow as a result of the rise in the use of specialty medications.
For this article, we began by screening the top holdings of the iShares U.S. Healthcare ETF (IYH) to focus on prominent companies within the U.S. healthcare sector. From this list, we selected the top 10 holdings based on their weight in the ETF portfolio. We then ranked these stocks according to the number of hedge funds holding positions in each company as of Q4 2024, based on data from Insider Monkey's hedge fund tracking database.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter's strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
A surgeon examining a patient's brain in an operating room, paramedics nearby.
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 96
The fifth stock on our list of the best healthcare stocks is Boston Scientific Corporation (NYSE:BSX). It is a Massachusetts-based company that specializes in developing, manufacturing, and distributing medical devices for interventional procedures worldwide. It is divided into two sections: Cardiovascular and MedSurg. Citing the company's impressive fourth-quarter earnings, Canaccord Genuity raised the price objective from $101 to $117 on February 6 and kept its Buy rating on the shares.
In the fourth quarter of 2024, Boston Scientific Corporation (NYSE:BSX) recorded net sales of over $4.6 billion, a 22.4% increase over the same time the previous year. Compared to $504 million, or $0.34 per share, in the previous year, GAAP net income attributable to common stockholders increased to $566 million, or $0.38 per share. Adjusted EPS for Q4 increased from $0.55 to $0.7. Net sales for 2024 as a whole came to $16.75 billion, representing a 17.6% increase over the previous year.
Boston Scientific Corporation (NYSE:BSX) announced on March 3 that it has reached a final deal to buy the privately held medical device startup SoniVie Ltd. The TIVUS Intravascular Ultrasound System, an experimental device created by SoniVie, is intended to treat hypertension disorders by targeting the nerves that surround blood vessels.
Overall BSX ranks 5th among the innovative healthcare stocks to watch in 2025. While we acknowledge the potential of BSX as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter timeframe. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than BSX but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires.
Disclosure: None. Insider Monkey focuses on uncovering the best investment ideas of hedge funds and insiders. Please subscribe to our free daily e-newsletter to get the latest investment ideas from hedge funds' investor letters by entering your email address below.
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The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Donald Trump's trade war is fast turning into a fiasco. When the president started the war, Team Trump advertised it as certain to be fast, easy, and cheap. Trump would impose tariffs. The world would yield to his will. The tariffs would do everything at once. They would protect U.S. industry from foreign competition without raising prices, and generate vast revenues that would finance other tax cuts. Americans could eat their cake, continue to have the cake, and trade the same cake for pie—all at the same time. 'There's not going to be any pain for American workers,' Trump's press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, vowed in April. The advertising rapidly proved false. The U.S. economy is slowing because of the Trump tariffs; China's is thriving in spite of them. Team Trump falsely promotes vague five-page outlines with alienated former allies as big deals; China is successfully wooing some of its former rivals, such as Vietnam. America's standing in the world is measurably sinking; China's is measurably rising. Courts are ruling that Trump's tariffs are illegal; public opinion mistrusts the tariffs, regarding them as expensive and unproductive. The promise of huge flows of painless money from tariff revenues is evanescing as the fantasy it always was. Oh, and the country's largest chain of Halloween retailers canceled its traditional summer grand opening because of Trump-caused supply disruptions. What comes next, as things go wrong? Trump's first instinct is to blame the targets of his economic aggression for not cooperating with his wishes. On May 30, Trump accused China of violating an imaginary agreement with him. On June 4, he complained that Xi Jinping was 'extremely hard to make a deal with.' But Trump seldom chooses to quarrel with foreign dictators, saying in the same breath, 'I like President Xi of China, always have, and always will.' Today, in all-caps emphasis, Trump announced that a deal had been done, declaring that his 'RELATIONSHIP IS EXCELLENT' with the Chinese president-for-life. The lack of details in the announcement strongly suggests that Trump yielded more and gained less than his publicity apparatus wants Americans to believe. That's because, in reality, Trump's global trade war has always been subordinate to his domestic culture war. Trump much prefers to vent his rage against enemies within. Get ready for him to blame the failure of his trade war on fellow Americans who did not support him enough. The Trump tariffs will be ballyhooed as an act of patriotism, a necessary sacrifice to be laid on the altar of the nation. One of Trump's television talkers reminded viewers that Americans melted down their pots and pans to win the Second World War. If the president needs to ration dolls and colored pencils, how dare any true American raise a contrary voice? The coming call for national solidarity with Trump's Great Patriotic War against imported Halloween costumes deserves all the scoffing it will get and more. Trump ordered the nation into economic warfare. He did not do any of the things necessary to create any hope of success in that war. The impending defeat is his personal doing, entirely his own fault. [Jonathan Chait: The good news about Trump's tariffs] Recall the classic Norm Macdonald bit in which the comedian marvels that in the 20th century, Germany decided to go to war with 'the world,' twice. That was meant as a joke. Trump adopted it as his actual strategy. Trump's rationalizers invoke anxiety about China as his justification. Yes, China numbered among the targets of Trump's 'Liberation Day' tariffs. But so did Australia. So did Brazil. So did Canada. So did Denmark. So did Egypt. And on and on, through the whole alphabet of American allies and trading partners. The United States is by far the planet's strongest national economy, producing slightly more than one-quarter of the planet's goods and services. Including its historic and recent partners, the United States could potentially lead a group of nations sufficiently influential to write economic rules that everybody would need to take into account. That fact underpinned the Trans-Pacific Partnership concept of the Obama years: Form a large-enough and attractive-enough club, and China will have no choice but to comply with the founding members' terms. Trump's alternative concept is for a quarter of the world economy to cut itself off from the other three-quarters, and then wait for the three-quarters to beg for mercy from the one-quarter. Unsurprisingly, that concept is fast proving a stinker. But suppose the president sincerely believed that the U.S. had no choice: The one-quarter must fight the three-quarters as a matter of national survival, or 'liberation,' from the tyranny of foreign goods and services, foreign fruits and vegetables. Crazy, but suppose he did. What would follow? A rational president would grasp that a U.S. economic war against the rest of the world would be a big, protracted, and painful undertaking. Such an enormous commitment would require democratic consent from a large majority of the public, all the more so because the United States is starting the war itself. Trump's trade conflict is very much a war of choice. The president must explain why he chose it. A rational president determined to fight an economic war would try to mobilize broad support from the public and from Congress. He would seek allies in Congress, and not only from his own party. He might, for example, compromise on some of his other goals. If he also wanted to tighten immigration at the same time as waging a global trade war, or to roll back DEI programs, or to cut taxes for the wealthy, or to relax anti-corruption measures, or to pardon the crimes of his violent supporters, or to plan any other ambitious but divisive project, he might think twice about pursuing them. You can't ask your opponents to pay more and do without if you won't forgo even a scrap of your partisan agenda. You can ask anyway, but don't be shocked when they answer with a Bronx cheer. That president would also lead from the front. A president seeking to inspire Americans to endure hardship for the greater good would certainly not throw himself a multimillion-dollar birthday parade at public expense. He would not accept lavish gifts from foreign governments, would not operate a pay-for-access business that collected billions of dollars for himself and his family from undisclosed favor-seekers. While asking other Americans to accept less, he would not brazenly help himself to more. He certainly would not troll, insult, and demean those who may not have voted for him, but whose cooperation he needs now. This president has, of course, done the most egregious version of every item above. His economic war is adjunct to his partisan culture war. He did not seek broad support. He gleefully offends and alienates everyone outside his base. Which works for him as long as times are prosperous, as they were in the first three years of his first administration. Allow things to get tough, though, and it's a different story. Trump cannot ask for patience and trust, because at least half the country has unalterably judged him as untrustworthy and out only for himself. [David Frum: The ultimate bait and switch of Trump's tariffs] Trump bet his presidency on the theory that trade wars are 'good and easy to win,' as he posted during his first term. His second-term trade war, however, is proving not so easy, and not so good, either. He is fighting it alone, without global allies or domestic consent, because that's his nature. It's now also his problem. In the 1983 movie WarGames, a computer thinks its way through dozens of terrifying nuclear scenarios and concludes: 'The only winning move is not to play.' In other words, the only safe way to conduct a nuclear exchange is never to have one. The same could be said of trade wars, at least when fought by one nation, however big and rich, against all the others, all at once. Trump decided he did not care about Americans' support for his economic war. He did not ask for their backing. He did not make any effort to win it. He willfully alienated at least half of the public. Now that he's losing, his supporters want to scold the country because it rejects the whole misbegotten project as stupid and doomed. Don't listen to their reproaches. This is Trump's war, and his alone. The only way to win now is to end Trump's trade war as rapidly as possible. And then end the excessive, unilateral trade powers of a corrupt president who blundered into a pointless and doomed conflict without justification, plan, or consent. Article originally published at The Atlantic
