Barron's Picks And Pans: AbbVie, Crocs, RealReal, Roku And More

• This weekend's Barron's cover story takes a look at whether the hot IPO market is a bubble.
• Other featured articles review Dividend Aristocrats on a roll and offer the results from a survey of tech CIOs.
• Also, the prospects for a pharmaceutical merger, a best-in-class cruise line operator, a momentum stock that stumbled and an unlikely comeback candidate.

This weekend's Barron's cover story, "Today's IPO Market Is Not the Next Dot-Com Bubble" by Eric J. Savitz asks whether RealReal Inc REAL is the next Pets.com. See what may come for Lyft Inc LYFT and others.

Josh Nathan-Kazis's "AbbVie Buying Allergan Isn't the Right Remedy for the Stock" points out that AbbVie Inc ABBV is acquiring a company with problems like its own, an expensive life raft for the 45% premium it is paying over the Allergan plc AGN stock price.

In "Carnival Stock Is Headed for Smoother Sailing," Andrew Bary says Carnival Corp CCL now looks like a bargain, after hitting the rocks on reduced 2019 financial guidance. Plus, it has the best balance sheet in the cruise-line operator industry.

Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN and Microsoft Corporation MSFT led the way in a recent survey of chief information officers, according to "Who's Winning Over the Big Tech Spenders—and Who May Be Left Behind" by Tae Kim.

In Lawrence C. Strauss's "6 Dividend Stocks That Beat the S&P 500," see why the so-called Dividend Aristocrats have fared so well this year and are set up to outperform if rates fall. Discover how Kimberly Clark Corp KMB, Procter & Gamble Co PG and others have fared.

See Also: Bulls & Bears Of The Week: AT&T, Carnival, McDonald's, Microsoft And More

"Move Over, FAANGs. Here Come the WPPCKs." by Nicholas Jasinski makes the case that when economic conditions get hairy, then boring, dividend-paying consumer-staples stocks like PepsiCo, Inc. PEP and Walmart Inc WMT become a lot more appealing.

In "Roku's Rapidly Rising Stock Takes a Timeout," David Marino-Nachison examines what it means that previously hot shares of streaming-video company Roku Inc ROKU dropped so sharply this past week. Find out whether Amazon is to blame.

Even when initial public offerings sizzle, that doesn't mean they will stay that way forever. So says Al Root's "Can Crocs Make a Comeback?." Does former darling polymer-shoe maker Crocs, Inc. CROX signal that there can be second acts?

Photo courtesy of Roku.