Among the biggest risers on the S&P 500 on Friday November 22 was Stericycle Inc. ($SRCL), popping some 2.59% to a price of $64.09 a share with some 1.25 million shares trading hands.
Starting the day trading at $62.97, Stericycle Inc. reached an intraday high of $64.14 and hit intraday lows of $62.50. Shares gained $1.62 apiece by day’s end. Over the last 90 days, the stock’s average daily volume has been n/a of its 91.13 million share total float. Today’s action puts the stock’s 50-day SMA at $n/a and 200-day SMA at $n/a with a 52-week range of $34.36 to $63.02.
Stericycle provides regulated medical waste management services to large-quantity generators (such as hospitals) and small-quantity generators (such as medical and dental offices). The company handles disposal via its massive network of processing facilities that house autoclaves (steam treatment to kill pathogens) and, to a lesser degree, incinerators. Medical waste includes the likes of needles, syringes, gloves, cultures, bloodied materials, and anatomical waste. The company also offers a host of ancillary services, including OSHA compliance, pharmaceutical waste management, sharps management, patient-communications solutions, hazardous waste pickup, and secure document destruction (Shred-it).
Stericycle Inc. has its corporate headquarters located in Lake Forest, IL and employs 22,500 people. Its market cap has now risen to $5.84 billion after today’s trading, its P/E ratio is now n/a, its P/S n/a, P/B 2.36, and P/FCF n/a.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) is the most visible stock index in the United States, but that doesn’t make it the best. In fact, the industry standard for market watchers and institutional investors in gauging portfolio performance is the S&P 500.
The DJIA relies on just 30 stocks as a sample of large- and mega-cap firms, dwarfed by the 500 contained in the S&P 500, and it also weights its returns using an outdated and flawed price-weighting method. The S&P 500’s weighting is based on market cap, making it a much better representation of actual market performance for large- and mega-cap stocks.