Investors often hold blue-chip stocks at the core of their portfolios. That makes sense. After all, blue-chip companies are leaders in their industries. Their names are familiar to investors.

What are blue-chip stocks?

Blue-chip stocks are from companies that are large, well-established, and financially sound. These companies have strong brand names and reputations, and they generate dependable earnings. Blue-chip companies usually boast consistent dividends and are often considered less risky, given their financial stability.

However, investors may differ in how they define blue-chip companies. Some investors demand that a blue-chip stock be included in a particular index, such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Others may include only dividend-paying companies on their lists of blue-chip stocks. Still others may have specific market-cap thresholds for blue-chip companies.

10 best blue-chip stocks to buy for the long term—January 2026

These are the largest firms by market cap on Morningstar’s Best Companies to Own list whose stocks were the most undervalued as of Jan. 27, 2026.

  1. Sony Group SONY
  2. SAP SAP
  3. Intuit INTU
  4. TSMC TSM
  5. Microsoft MSFT
  6. Bristol-Myers Squibb BMY
  7. Automatic Data Processing ADP
  8. Nestlé NSRGY
  9. Danaher DHR
  10. GSK GSK

The companies on Morningstar’s list of the best blue-chip stocks to buy for the long term share a few qualities:

  • Stocks from companies included on Morningstar’s list of the Best Companies to Own for 2026. Companies on this list have wide Morningstar Economic Moat Ratings and predictable cash flows, and they are run by management teams that make smart capital-allocation decisions.
  • Stocks that are undervalued, as measured by our price/fair value metric.
  • Companies with market caps above $100 billion.

Here’s a little more about each of these blue-chip stocks for the long term, including commentary from the Morningstar analysts who cover each company. All data is as of Jan. 27, 2026.

Sony

  • Morningstar Price/Fair Value: 0.70
  • Market Capitalization: $134.9 billion
  • Morningstar Style Box: Large Blend
  • Forward Dividend Yield: 0.67%
  • Industry: Consumer Electronics

Consumer electronics firm Sony is the most affordable stock on our list of the best blue-chip stocks to buy. Sony is a conglomerate with consumer electronics roots, which not only designs, develops, produces, and sells electronic equipment and devices but also is engaged in content businesses, such as console and mobile games, music, and movies. The stock is trading 30% below our fair value estimate of $32.50 per share.

As technologies and consumer preferences change rapidly, it is generally difficult for consumer electronics companies to build an economic moat. The replacement cycle for digital appliances is usually four to six years, but as most products are commoditized, it is difficult for manufacturers to build an ecosystem that prevents customers from switching to other brands. As a result, Sony’s profitability in electronics had been unstable in the past, while its music, movies, and financial services businesses have generated solid results.

Over the past decade, Sony has transformed its business model to enable more solid and stable growth by reducing the volatility of the consumer electronics business and by aggressively investing in acquiring content for its entertainment businesses, such as music, movies, and games.

In the consumer electronics business, profits are generated from digital cameras and audio equipment, where Sony has strengths, while the TV business is thoroughly focused on avoiding losses by focusing on premium products and strictly managing inventories.

In the music and movie businesses, Sony has been able to seize growth opportunities such as the expansion of the streaming market by expanding its content and exploring new artists.

The image sensor business has the largest global market share. The majority of sales come from the mobile market, which is benefiting from the strong demand for improved image quality in smartphone cameras. However, unlike the entertainment businesses, image sensors require high capital investment and research and development, and with such high fixed costs, we believe the profitability of the business is not high enough.

PlayStation is Sony’s largest revenue-generating business. While user migration from PS4 to PS5 is progressing well, rising game development costs and competition from other platforms, such as Steam, are becoming a concern for the business.

SAP

  • Morningstar Price/Fair Value: 0.75
  • Market Capitalization: $270.4 billion
  • Morningstar Style Box: Large Growth
  • Forward Dividend Yield: 1.12%
  • Industry: Software - Application

Known as the leader in enterprise resource planning software, SAP’s portfolio includes software for supply chain management, procurement, travel and expense management, and customer relationship management, among others. Shares of SAP stock look 25% undervalued relative to our $311 fair value estimate.

SAP is the world’s largest provider of enterprise application software and global market leader in enterprise resource planning software. The company earns revenue by selling subscriptions for its various cloud-based software-as-a-service products as well as licenses and maintenance fees for on-premises software, which are now being largely phased out. Besides its core ERP products such as S/4HANA, SAP offers well-known back-office software products such as Concur for travel and expense management and Ariba for procurement.

SAP was late to the cloud for ERP software but now offers two compelling products: RISE with SAP, which is the private-cloud edition designed for SAP’s large enterprise customers that are transitioning from their SAP on-premises ERP (ECC) to SAP S/4HANA; and GROW with SAP, which is the public cloud edition that is designed for midmarket companies with less complex requirements. We think GROW with SAP fills an important void in SAP’s product offering as previously SAP’s ERP software was often unattractive to smaller customers given the implementation costs were just too high. With the launch of these new products, cloud revenue is growing swiftly and SAP is capturing many new midmarket customers.

SAP is following a land and expand strategy, which is common in the enterprise software market. RISE with SAP and GROW with SAP are the land products after which the company then upsells and cross-sells more SAP products to these customers, which is much easier in a cloud-based model. The company has yet to release its latest long-term ambitions, but expects revenue growth to accelerate at least through 2027 along with rising margins as the cloud-business reaches efficient scale.

Intuit

  • Morningstar Price/Fair Value: 0.76
  • Market Capitalization: $151.8 billion
  • Morningstar Style Box: Large Blend
  • Forward Dividend Yield: 0.82%
  • Industry: Software - Application

Next on our list of the best blue-chip stocks to buy is Intuit. Intuit serves small and midsize businesses with accounting software QuickBooks and online marketing platform Mailchimp. The company also operates retail tax filing tool TurboTax, personal finance platform Credit Karma, and a suite of professional tax offerings for accountants. The stock is trading at a 24% discount to our fair value estimate of $720 per share.

Intuit owns an array of small business and tax software products that enjoy dominant market positions in their respective verticals. We think Intuit Enterprise Suite, the company’s entry-level enterprise resource planning platform that combines Mailchimp’s front-office and QuickBooks’ back-office functionalities, is a competitive product supporting Intuit’s expansion among midsize companies. In addition, Intuit’s done-for-you products, offering real-time artificial intelligence and expert support across QuickBooks, Mailchimp, and TurboTax, should become an effective tool that lifts average revenue per customer.

Unlike large enterprises that require complex information systems with advanced capabilities, small and midsize businesses value the convenience of managing their accounting records, customer information, and payroll on one platform. We think Intuit’s introduction of IES is a favorable strategic move because it combines QuickBooks’ and Mailchimp’s strengths to reduce overhead for high-growth businesses that otherwise need to manage multiple systems on a daily basis. Meanwhile, single-purpose, small-business-oriented software like QuickBooks delivers limited functionality at a monthly cost of several hundred dollars or less. Multipurpose ERP systems targeting midsize companies like Oracle NetSuite are usually priced at tens of thousands of dollars per month, including initiation costs. We think IES, as an entry-level ERP service with a monthly price of several thousand dollars, could help Intuit capture new growth opportunities by narrowing the gap between the two existing categories on the market.

TurboTax Live is Intuit’s assisted tax-filing experience that connects individual users with tax accountants in real time. Intuit also offers QB Live and Mailchimp Live, matching small businesses with accounting or marketing professionals. We think both mechanisms have become Intuit’s key differentiators from competitive offerings that are incremental to the company’s moat. The high ARPCs of Live products also present attractive upsell opportunities that drive critical top-line growth in mature markets like small business accounting and DIY tax.

TSMC

  • Morningstar Price/Fair Value: 0.79
  • Market Capitalization: $1.5 trillion
  • Morningstar Style Box: Large Growth
  • Forward Dividend Yield: 0.99%
  • Industry: Semiconductors

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is the world’s largest dedicated chip foundry, with about 70% market share in 2025. Shares of TSMC stock look 21% undervalued relative to our $428 fair value estimate.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. makes integrated circuits for customers based on their proprietary IC designs. TSMC has long benefited from semiconductor firms around the globe transitioning from integrated device manufacturers to fabless designers. Like all foundries, it assumes the costs and capital expenditures of running factories amid a highly cyclical market for its customers. Foundries tend to add excessive capacity during times of burgeoning demand, which can result in underutilization during downturns that hampers profitability.

The rise of fabless semiconductor firms has supported the growth of foundries, which has in turn encouraged increased competition. However, most of these newer competitors are confined to low-end manufacturing due to prohibitive costs and engineering know-how associated with leading-edge technology. To prolong the excess returns enabled by leading-edge process technology, or nodes, TSMC initially focuses on logic products, mostly used on central processing units and mobile chips, then focuses on more cost-conscious applications. This strategy has been successful, illustrated by the fact that the firm is one of the two foundries still possessing leading-edge nodes while dozens of peers lag.

We note two long-term growth factors for TSMC. First, the consolidation of semiconductor firms is expected to create demand for integrated systems made with the most advanced nodes. Second, organic growth of artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, and high-performance computing applications may last for decades. AI and HPC play a central role in quickly processing human and machine inputs to solve complex problems like autonomous driving and language processing, which accentuates the need for more energy-efficient chips. Cheaper semiconductors have made integrating sensors, controllers, and motors to improve home, office, and factory efficiency possible.

Microsoft

  • Morningstar Price/Fair Value: 0.80
  • Market Capitalization: $3.6 trillion
  • Morningstar Style Box: Large Blend
  • Forward Dividend Yield: 0.76%
  • Industry: Software - Infrastructure

The largest company on our list of best blue-chip stocks to buy, Microsoft develops and licenses consumer and enterprise software. The company is organized into three equally sized broad segments: productivity and business processes, intelligence cloud, and more personal computing. Microsoft stock is trading at a 20% discount to our fair value estimate of $600 per share.

Microsoft is one of three public cloud providers that can deliver a wide variety of PaaS/IaaS solutions at scale. Based on its investment in OpenAI, the company has also emerged as a leader in AI. Microsoft has also enjoyed great success in upselling users on higher-priced Office 365 versions, notably to include advanced telephony features. These factors have combined to drive a more focused company that offers impressive revenue growth with high and expanding margins and deepening ties with customers.

We believe that Azure is the centerpiece of the new Microsoft. Even though we estimate it is already an approximately $75 billion business, it is still growing at approximately 30% annually. Azure has several distinct advantages, including that it offers customers a painless way to experiment and move select workloads to the cloud, creating seamless hybrid cloud environments. Since existing customers remain in the same Microsoft environment, applications and data are easily moved from on-premises to the cloud. Microsoft can also leverage its massive installed base of all Microsoft solutions as a touch point for an Azure move. Azure is also an excellent launching point for secular trends in AI, business intelligence, and Internet of Things, as it continues to launch new services centered around these broad themes.

Microsoft is also shifting its traditional on-premises products to become cloud-based SaaS solutions. Critical applications include LinkedIn, Office 365, Dynamics 365, and the Power platform, with these moves now beyond the halfway point and no longer a financial drag. Office 365 retains its virtual monopoly in office productivity software, which we do not expect to change in the foreseeable future. Lastly, the company is also pushing its gaming business increasingly toward recurring revenues and residing in the cloud. We believe that customers will continue to drive the transition from on-premises to cloud solutions, and revenue growth will remain robust with margins continuing to improve for the next several years

Bristol-Myers Squibb

  • Morningstar Price/Fair Value: 0.84
  • Market Capitalization: $113.1 billion
  • Morningstar Style Box: Large Value
  • Forward Dividend Yield: 4.54%
  • Industry: Drug Manufacturers - General

Bristol-Myers Squibb discovers, develops, and markets drugs for various therapeutic areas, such as cardiovascular, cancer, and immune disorders. Shares of Bristol stock look 16% undervalued relative to our $66 fair value estimate.

Adept at partnerships and acquisitions, Bristol-Myers Squibb has built a strong portfolio of drugs and a robust pipeline. This strategy is evident in the firm’s acquisition of Celgene, which netted the firm an excellent pipeline and a strong foothold in blood cancer. More recent acquisitions in 2024—oncology firms Mirati and RayzeBio and neurology firm Karuna—also help support Bristol’s strong overall pipeline and wide moat.

The acquisition of Medarex in 2009 helped secure Bristol’s strong first-mover advantage in cancer immunotherapy, bringing rights to novel antibodies against PD-1 (Opdivo) and CTLA4 (Yervoy) used in melanoma as well as other cancers, including lung and kidney cancers. A newer combination drug Opdualag is also approved in melanoma, with ongoing trials in lung cancer. Competition from Merck’s market-leading PD-1 Keytruda and a 2028 US patent expiration for Opdivo are clear headwinds. However, a recently approved subcutaneous version of Opdivo will help slow sales declines, buying time for Bristol’s pipeline to advance. BioNTech-partnered pipeline program pumitamig is in phase 3 testing in certain forms of breast and lung cancers and could be an early mover among new, bispecific immunotherapy drugs.

Bristol is aggressively repositioning itself to expand through challenging patent losses for drugs representing 47% of its 2024 sales, including cancer drugs Revlimid and Pomalyst, by 2026, and cardiovascular drug Eliquis (marketed with Pfizer) in 2028. The 2019 Celgene acquisition moved Bristol deeper into blood-related disease, which tends to be an area with strong drug pricing power and should help Bristol in a time when both governments and private payers are pushing back on drug prices. Blood cancer cell therapy Breyanzi and anemia drug Reblozyl have secured leading positions in the US market, and pipeline drugs iberdomide and mezigdomide are in phase 3 trials. Beyond Celgene, the 2020 Myokardia acquisition (cardiology drug Camyzos) and 2024 Karuna acquisition (schizophrenia drug Cobenfy) are poised to each generate multi-billion-dollar annual sales. We are monitoring data updates in 2026 that could expand labels or help secure new launches.=

Automatic Data Processing

  • Morningstar Price/Fair Value: 0.86
  • Market Capitalization: $102.9 billion
  • Morningstar Style Box: Large Blend
  • Forward Dividend Yield: 2.67%
  • Industry: Software - Application

Automatic Data Processing is a global technology company providing cloud-based human capital management solutions, enabling clients to better implement payroll, talent, time, tax, and benefits administration. ADP stock trades at a 14% discount to our fair value estimate of $297 per share.

ADP is a global leader in human capital management and payroll software and should remain so for the foreseeable future. It services customers of all sizes, in every industry, across 140 countries. The company has two segments: employer services and professional employer organization services.

ADP primarily makes money by offering a wide range of cloud-based human resources products and outsourcing services that help companies manage HR tasks such as hiring. It also provides professional employer organization services, which act as a shared HR department for smaller businesses, allowing them to focus on their core operations. A major advantage of PEOs is that they can pool employees from different companies to secure better deals on benefits and healthcare.

ADP’s business depends on the economy and employment levels, meaning its revenue can increase and decrease with job growth. It utilizes a subscription model where customers pay based on the number of HR solutions they use and the number of employees they have. Most of them pay a monthly fee per employee, which increases slightly each year. Some clients who use fewer features may pay a flat fee instead.

There is significant competition in the HCM and payroll software industry from legacy peers and newer solutions, in-house and third-party. ADP has thus far illustrated an ability to stave off competition, relying on its capability as one of the only software providers in the industry that can service customers of all sizes. Additionally, the company has successfully modernized its platforms, which are now cloud-compatible and designed to improve the user experience, supporting client retention. As a result, ADP’s share of US employees paid using its software has consistently remained around one-sixth.

Nestlé

  • Morningstar Price/Fair Value: 0.87
  • Market Capitalization: $241.1 billion
  • Morningstar Style Box: Large Value
  • Forward Dividend Yield: 3.86%
  • Industry: Packaged Foods

With a 150-year-plus history, Nestle is the largest food and beverage manufacturer in the world by sales. Its diverse product portfolio includes brands such as Nescafe, Maggi, Nespresso, and Purina. Nestle stock is trading 13% below our fair value estimate of $110 per share.

Nestle has faced challenges in delivering volume growth in recent years, largely due to multiple rounds of sizable price increases that have weighed on consumer sentiment, coupled with operational shortcomings. These included underwhelming innovation efforts, inconsistent execution with market share losses in some key business areas, and insufficient marketing investment behind strategic priorities.

The packaged food sector is becoming increasingly commoditized, and we see a risk that price competition may continue to weigh on Nestle’s sales growth. Global consumer products companies face growing competition from smaller, local, more agile competitors. Additionally, private-label products are becoming increasingly mainstream, offering a compelling value proposition.

Recognizing these challenges, Nestle’s new management, appointed in 2024, is taking steps to accelerate top-line growth with interventions focused on reestablishing product differentiation across categories, addressing underperforming business areas in a systematic way, and pursuing more targeted and meaningful innovation. These efforts will be supported by increased marketing investment, which is set to reach around 9% of sales by the end of 2025 and beyond (compared with an average of 7.5% of sales in 2022-24). This investment will be funded by a three-year cost reduction program aimed at delivering CHF 2.5 billion in incremental cost savings by the end of 2027.

While these measures might take some time to reinvigorate volume growth across underperforming business areas, prudent research and development and marketing investment should help Nestle better align its product portfolio with rapidly evolving consumer trends. Additionally, population growth, urbanization, and economic growth are secular drivers in emerging markets that should support medium-term volume growth, though at a lower level than historical averages.

Danaher

  • Morningstar Price/Fair Value: 0.87
  • Market Capitalization: $166.5 billion
  • Morningstar Style Box: Large Blend
  • Forward Dividend Yield: 0.54%
  • Industry: Diagnostics & Research

In 1984, Danaher’s founders transformed a real estate organization into an industrial-focused manufacturing company. The firm now focuses primarily on manufacturing scientific instruments and consumables in the life sciences and diagnostic industries. Shares of Danaher stock look 13% undervalued relative to our $270 fair value estimate.

Through its Danaher Business System, Danaher aims for continuous improvement of its scientific technology portfolio by seeking out attractive markets and then making acquisitions to enter or expand within those fields and also divesting assets that are no longer seen as core, such as the recently divested Veralto operations. After acquisitions, Danaher aims to accelerate core growth at acquired companies by making research and development and marketing-related investments. It also implements lean manufacturing principles and administrative cost controls to boost operating margins. Overall, we appreciate Danaher’s strategic moves, which have pushed it into attractive end markets with strong growth prospects and sticky, recurring revenue streams.

The company’s acquisition-focused strategy has contributed to its becoming a top-five player in the highly fragmented and relatively stable life sciences and diagnostic tool markets, approximately 20 years after its first acquisition in the space (Radiometer in 2004). Important life sciences and diagnostic acquisitions have included Beckman Coulter, Pall, and Cepheid. In early 2020, Danaher completed its largest acquisition, GE Biopharma, now known as Cytiva, which fills some gaps for Danaher within the biopharmaceutical development and manufacturing tool market. We find the drug manufacturing part of the life sciences market particularly attractive given its strong growth trajectory, high margins, and high switching costs associated with regulatory and reproducibility concerns of end users. Management has started making more acquisitions in that space, such as Aldevron, and we would expect more tuck-in acquisitions in this and other end markets, given its intense focus on acquisitions.

Danaher also continues to prune its portfolio of businesses. The recent divestiture of its environmental and applied solutions group (now called Veralto) is just the latest for the company, which distributed shares in the now publicly traded Fortive (industrials) to shareholders directly in 2016 and in Envista (dental) in 2019. Additional divestitures may be possible in the future as well.

GSK

  • Morningstar Price/Fair Value: 0.88
  • Market Capitalization: $102.8 billion
  • Morningstar Style Box: Large Value
  • Forward Dividend Yield: 3.36%
  • Industry: Drug Manufacturers - General

Drug manufacturer GSK rounds out our list of best blue-chip stocks to buy. In the pharmaceutical industry, GSK ranks as one of the largest firms by total sales. The stock is 12% undervalued relative to our fair value estimate of $58 per share.

As one of the largest pharmaceutical and vaccine companies, GSK has used its vast resources to create the next generation of healthcare treatments. The company’s innovative new product lineup and expansive list of patent-protected drugs create a wide economic moat, in our opinion.

The magnitude of GSK’s reach is evidenced by a product portfolio that spans several therapeutic classes. The diverse platform insulates the company from problems with any single product. Additionally, the company has developed next-generation drugs in respiratory and HIV areas that should help mitigate both branded and generic competition. We expect GSK to be a major competitor in respiratory, HIV, and vaccines over the next decade.

On the pipeline front, GSK has shifted from its historical strategy of targeting slight enhancements toward true innovation. Also, it is focusing more on oncology and immunology, with genetic data to help develop the next generation of drugs. The benefits of these strategies are showing up in GSK’s early-stage drugs. We expect this focus will improve approval rates and pricing power. In contrast to respiratory drugs, treatments for cancer indications carry much stronger pricing power with payers.

We think GSK’s decision to divest the consumer business is likely to unlock value over the long run. GSK divested Haleon, its consumer group, in July 2022. Given the strong valuations of consumer healthcare companies, we expect this unit will yield a stronger valuation than what was implied within the company’s structure before the divestment.