Because of ageing and growing populations, better technologies and treatments, and increasing chronic disease burden, demand for healthcare services is expected to continue to increase over the long term.
This bodes well for healthcare shares, positioning them perfectly for growth over the 2020s and beyond. With that in mind, I have picked out two healthcare shares that are highly rated right now:
CSL Limited (ASX: CSL)
CSL is one of the world's leading biotechnology companies, comprising the CSL Behring and Seqirus businesses. CSL Behring is the global leader in plasma therapies, whereas Seqirus is the world's second largest influenza vaccines business.
Both businesses appear well-placed for growth over the long term. For CSL Behring, this is due to robust demand for its life-saving immunoglobulins products and its highly promising research and development pipeline. The latter is filled with a good number of potentially lucrative products.
Supporting this growth will be its Seqirus business, which is expected to experience a surge in demand for seasonal flu vaccines because of the pandemic.
And while plasma collection headwinds are likely to weigh on the company's overall growth in the immediate term, once the pandemic passes, collections will become easier and this headwind will ease.
One broker that is positive on CSL is Citi. Last week it upgraded its shares to a buy rating with a $310 price target. This compares to the current CSL share price of $261.00.
ResMed Inc. (ASX: RMD)
Another healthcare share which is highly rated is medical device company ResMed.
ResMed aims to change lives by developing, manufacturing, and distributing innovative medical devices and cloud-based software solutions that better diagnose, treat, and manage sleep-disordered breathing, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and other key chronic diseases.
These are lucrative markets for the company to target. Management estimates that there are hundreds of millions of sufferers of both sleep apnoea and COPD globally.
In addition to its industry-leading hardware, the company has a burgeoning digital health ecosystem. This ecosystem reached over 12 million cloud connectable medical devices in 2020, providing ResMed with strong recurring revenues and a material amount of high quality data.
Analysts at Morgans are bullish on the company. They recently retained their add rating and put a price target of $30.09 on its shares. This compares to the current ResMed share price of $25.03.
