When it comes to pharmaceuticals, few names are as renowned as Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK). Unfortunately in many cases, the bigger you are, the harder you fall. After a disappointing third quarter earnings report, Merck stock plummeted, leaving many question marks as to its trajectory in the new year.

InvestorPlace writer William White described how MRK stock took a hit after the Q3 results were released.

I’d say he was being quite diplomatic. What shook Wall Street was an unexpected revenue miss. In part, multiple cyber attacks caused temporary production shutdowns. The net impact was $135 million down the drain. Investors saw Merck stock shed 6% in the aftermath.

Even more worrisome was Merck’s bread-and-butter pharmaceutical sales, which dipped 3% to $9.2 billion in Q3. As White reported, “The company says that this was due to it losing exclusivity for several of its products in certain markets. It also points out that the drugs JANUVIA and JANUMET saw lower sales in the third quarter of the year.”

Of course, losing exclusivity is a major deal for any pharmaceutical company. It inherently increases competition and puts downward pressure on revenues and earnings. Therefore, it’s no surprise that many take a dim view on Merck stock.

Among covering analysts, a fairly decent-sized majority (67%) held “buy” or “strong buy” recommendations last month. This month, this statistic dropped sharply to 52%, reflecting growing uncertainty toward MRK stock.

Moving forward, should investors play it safe and avoid MRK?

Merck Stock Is Levered Toward a Groundbreaking Industry

Richard Band, editor of Profitable Investing, believes that the smart money should be buying the dip. While he acknowledges that Merck’s quarterly figures didn’t impress shareholders, he also believes that the selloff is overdone.

In Band’s assessment, Wall Street had a few major concerns with Merck’s Q3 report. First, several core drugs are due to lose their patent exclusivity, forcing MRK to make up the resultant shortfall.

Second, the company’s “immuno-oncology drug Keytruda also pulled out of Phase 3 lung cancer trials in Europe. And it has some competition with Bristol-Myers Squibb Co (NYSE:BMY) competitor Opdivo.”

But according to Band, none of these issues should have pummeled Merck stock the way they have. The reason is that immuno-oncology as a broader industry could be the game-changer humanity is looking for.

Immuno-oncology is a revolutionary process which works with the body’s immune system to help fight cancer. Traditional cancer therapies, such as surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, are akin to blunt-force attacks.

They get the job done — sort of — but they inevitably end up harming the body in the process. Immuno-oncology seeks to mitigate the effects of cancer cells, allowing the immune system to recharge and mount its counterattack.

It sounds like medical science fiction, yet this is where leading pharmaceuticals are taking us. Currently, immuno-oncology treatments are largely experimental, limited to terminally ill patients. However, we could eventually see a time where these treatments are home-delivered and operate independently of other treatments.

Band argues that we have plenty of space in the immuno-oncology sphere. Plus, the sector itself is ever-expanding and could potentially cover all cancer types. Moreover, Merck has several drugs in its pipeline, which is enough to cover the exclusivity falloff.

It’s Hard to Drop a Giant for the Count

Another point worth considering is that giant firms, irrespective of industry, are difficult to take down permanently. A perfect example is Equifax Inc. (NYSE:EFX). Here is an iconic institution that virtually all Americans trusted. That trust was violated horrifically when an apparently avoidable data breach occurred, compromising millions of social security numbers.

If any company should get beat down, it’s Equifax. Consider that their breach will have significant financial and economic consequences for years, perhaps decades, to come. Yet I wrote an article stating that EFX was a long-term buying opportunity. Since the publication date, the stock is up nearly 16%, despite the rightfully deserved moral outrage.

Here’s why I bring up Equifax. If a company can screw over the American people, then Merck should be allowed to disappoint on an earnings report. It’s not as if it does this consistently. Moreover, Q3 wasn’t a complete failure. Yes, the sudden drop in Merck stock is difficult to swallow, but consider it another long-term buying opportunity.

As of this writing, Josh Enomoto did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.