Is It Too Late to Buy These 2 Brilliant Passive Income Stocks?

Dividends never go out of style, but some dividend stocks can. That’s how some investors might feel about Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) and Bristol Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) these days. Both companies have generally maintained solid dividend programs, but right now they both face issues with slow or nonexistent revenue and earnings growth.

Pfizer and Bristol Myers Squibb have severely underperformed the S&P 500 over the past 12 months, and if these issues persist, things could get worse. Let’s find out whether it’s too late to buy shares of these passive income stocks.

1. Pfizer

Two years ago, Pfizer became the first company in the biopharma industry to hit $100 billion in annual sales. Things have changed dramatically since then. The drugmaker’s COVID-19 portfolio, which fueled its record-breaking sales run, lost steam as the pandemic receded. Last year, revenue and earnings dropped off a cliff. This could affect its dividend program.

Unless the company can turn things around, management could change its capital allocation priorities and reduce its dividend payments. However, Pfizer is well on its way to staging a comeback. The first step in its plan was to earn a good number of brand-new approvals. Last year, they numbered seven, more than twice as many as any other company in the industry.

Some of these brand-new products were pretty groundbreaking, too. For instance, Pfizer launched one of the first vaccines for the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) to ever get the green light from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Pfizer also decided to beef up its pipeline. It acquired Seagen, a cancer specialist, for $43 billion — a move it could afford partly thanks to its coronavirus-related success. Seagen was already a highly innovative company within its specialized field of oncology. The partnership between the two could produce gems in the future.

It will take some time for Pfizer to recover fully, but the company is on the right track. New products will start contributing…