Cardinal Health Falls After Downgrade To 'Hold'

NEW YORK (AP) — Shares of Cardinal Health Inc. fell Thursday after a Deutsche Bank analyst downgraded shares of the health care products and services company, pointing to stock's earlier gains in September.

Analyst Ross Muken now rates the shares at "Hold," down from "Buy." He said new CEO George Barrett has made significant steps to improve results at Cardinal's drug distribution business, but the results are a year or two away. Until then, he feels the stock won't trade much higher.

At the end of August, Cardinal Health spun off its clinical and medical products unit into a separate publicly traded company called CareFusion Corp. Since then, Cardinal shares are up 9.7 percent, ending Wednesday trading at $27.23.

The stock dropped 93 cents, or 3.4 percent, to $26.80 in Thursday afternoon trading.

Muken raised his price target to $30 per share from $28.50. He feels that AmerisourceBergen Corp. shares could do better than Cardinal Health shares because of that company's "better business mix, consistently impressive execution and more leverage to the impending generic wave."

Cardinal Health is based in Dublin, Ohio, while AmerisourceBergen is based in Valley Forge, Pa.