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How to buy Medifast stock
Own Medifast stock in just a few minutes.
Fact checked
Medifast, Inc is a personal services business based in the US. Medifast shares (MED) are listed on the NYSE and all prices are listed in US Dollars. Medifast employs 713 staff and has a trailing 12-month revenue of around USD$934.8 million.
How to buy shares in Medifast
- Compare share trading platforms. If you're a beginner, look for a platform with low commissions, expert ratings and investment tools to track your portfolio. Narrow down top brands with our comparison table.
- Open and fund your brokerage account. Complete an application with your personal and financial details, like your ID and bank information. Fund your account with a bank transfer, credit card or debit card.
- Search for Medifast. Find the stock by name or ticker symbol: MED. Research its history to confirm it's a solid investment against your financial goals.
- Purchase now or later. Buy today with a market order or use a limit order to delay your purchase until Medifast reaches your desired price. To spread out your purchase, look into dollar-cost averaging, which smooths out buying at consistent intervals and amounts.
- Decide on how many to buy. Weigh your budget against a diversified portfolio that can minimize risk through the market's ups and downs. You may be able to buy a fractional share of Medifast, depending on your broker.
- Check in on your investment. Congratulations, you own a part of Medifast. Optimize your portfolio by tracking how your stock — and even the business — performs with an eye on the long term. You may be eligible for dividends and shareholder voting rights on directors and management that can affect your stock.
Medifast share price
Use our graph to track the performance of MED stocks over time.Medifast shares at a glance
Information last updated 2021-03-03.
| 52-week range | USD$47.1865 - USD$279.46 |
|---|---|
| 50-day moving average | USD$246.4603 |
| 200-day moving average | USD$193.4272 |
| Wall St. target price | USD$289.25 |
| PE ratio | 30.1106 |
| Dividend yield | USD$4.52 (1.7%) |
| Earnings per share (TTM) | USD$8.68 |
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The value of any investment can go up or down depending on news, trends and market conditions. We are not investment advisers, so do your own due diligence to understand the risks before you invest.
Is it a good time to buy Medifast stock?
The technical analysis gauge below displays real-time ratings for the timeframes you select. This is not a recommendation, however. It represents a technical analysis based on the most popular technical indicators: Moving Averages, Oscillators and Pivots. Finder might not concur and takes no responsibility.
This chart is not advice or a guarantee of success. Rather, it gauges the real-time recommendations of three popular technical indicators: moving averages, oscillators and pivots. Finder is not responsible for how your stock performs.
Is Medifast under- or over-valued?
Valuing Medifast stock is incredibly difficult, and any metric has to be viewed as part of a bigger picture of Medifast's overall performance. However, analysts commonly use some key metrics to help gauge the value of a stock.
Medifast's P/E ratio
Medifast's current share price divided by its per-share earnings (EPS) over a 12-month period gives a "trailing price/earnings ratio" of roughly 30x. In other words, Medifast shares trade at around 30x recent earnings.
That's relatively high compared to, say, the trailing 12-month P/E ratio for the NASDAQ 100 at the end of 2019 (27.29). The high P/E ratio could mean that investors are optimistic about the outlook for the shares or simply that they're over-valued.
Medifast's PEG ratio
Medifast's "price/earnings-to-growth ratio" can be calculated by dividing its P/E ratio by its growth – to give 1.95. A low ratio can be interpreted as meaning the shares offer better value, while a higher ratio can be interpreted as meaning the shares offer worse value.
The PEG ratio provides a broader view than just the P/E ratio, as it gives more insight into Medifast's future profitability. By accounting for growth, it could also help you if you're comparing the share prices of multiple high-growth companies.
Medifast's EBITDA
Medifast's EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) is USD$142.7 million.
The EBITDA is a measure of a Medifast's overall financial performance and is widely used to measure a its profitability.
Medifast financials
| Revenue TTM | USD$934.8 million |
|---|---|
| Operating margin TTM | 14.48% |
| Gross profit TTM | USD$697.8 million |
| Return on assets TTM | 35.95% |
| Return on equity TTM | 78.5% |
| Profit margin | 11% |
| Book value | $13.415 |
| Market capitalisation | USD$3.1 billion |
TTM: trailing 12 months
Shorting Medifast shares
There are currently 397,629 Medifast shares held short by investors – that's known as Medifast's "short interest". This figure is 28.5% down from 555,878 last month.
There are a few different ways that this level of interest in shorting Medifast shares can be evaluated.
Medifast's "short interest ratio" (SIR)
Medifast's "short interest ratio" (SIR) is the quantity of Medifast shares currently shorted divided by the average quantity of Medifast shares traded daily (recently around 123871.96261682). Medifast's SIR currently stands at 3.21. In other words for every 100,000 Medifast shares traded daily on the market, roughly 3210 shares are currently held short.
However Medifast's short interest can also be evaluated against the total number of Medifast shares, or, against the total number of tradable Medifast shares (the shares that aren't held by "insiders" or major long-term shareholders – also known as the "float"). In this case Medifast's short interest could be expressed as 0.03% of the outstanding shares (for every 100,000 Medifast shares in existence, roughly 30 shares are currently held short) or 0.0489% of the tradable shares (for every 100,000 tradable Medifast shares, roughly 49 shares are currently held short).
Such a low SIR usually points to an optimistic outlook for the share price, with fewer people currently willing to bet against Medifast.
Find out more about how you can short Medifast stock.
Medifast share dividends
Dividend payout ratio: 49.4% of net profits
Recently Medifast has paid out, on average, around 49.4% of net profits as dividends. That has enabled analysts to estimate a "forward annual dividend yield" of 1.73% of the current stock value. This means that over a year, based on recent payouts (which are sadly no guarantee of future payouts), Medifast shareholders could enjoy a 1.73% return on their shares, in the form of dividend payments. In Medifast's case, that would currently equate to about $4.52 per share.
While Medifast's payout ratio might seem fairly standard, it's worth remembering that Medifast may be investing much of the rest of its net profits in future growth.
Medifast's most recent dividend payout was on 5 February 2021. The latest dividend was paid out to all shareholders who bought their shares by 21 December 2020 (the "ex-dividend date").
Medifast share price volatility
Over the last 12 months, Medifast's shares have ranged in value from as little as $47.1865 up to $279.46. A popular way to gauge a stock's volatility is its "beta".
Beta is a measure of a share's volatility in relation to the market. The market (NYSE average) beta is 1, while Medifast's is 1.5027. This would suggest that Medifast's shares are more volatile than the average for this exchange and represent, relatively-speaking, a higher risk (but potentially also market-beating returns).
Medifast overview
Medifast, Inc., through its subsidiaries, manufactures and distributes weight loss, weight management, healthy living products, and other consumable health and nutritional products in the United States and the Asia-Pacific. It offers bars, bites, pretzels, puffs, oatmeal and cereal crunch products, drinks, hearty choices, pancakes, puddings, soft serves, shakes, smoothies, soft bakes, and soups under the Medifast, OPTAVIA, Thrive by Medifast, Optimal Health by Take Shape for Life, and Flavors of Home brands. The company markets its products through direct ecommerce platform and franchise weight control center channels. Medifast, Inc. was founded in 1980 and is headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland.
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