Why Did Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) Go Down on Friday?

We recently published a list of These 10 Firms Took A Hit on Friday. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (NASDAQ:WBA) stands against other firms that took a hit on Friday.

Wall Street’s main indices all finished in the green territory on Friday, as investors repositioned their portfolios ahead of president-elect Donald Trump’s return to office.

The Dow jumped by 0.78 percent, while the S&P surged by 1 percent. Meanwhile, Nasdaq soared 1.51 percent.

However, ten companies under mixed sectors bucked an overall positive market sentiment as multiple negative factors put pressure on investor sentiment. In this article, let’s look at the reasons that dragged their shares performance.

To come up with the top 10 losers, we considered only the stocks with at least $2 billion in market capitalization and $5 million in daily trading volume.

A pharmacist discussing the health benefits of a prescription medication with a customer.

Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (NASDAQ:WBA)

Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (NASDAQ:WBA) saw its share prices on Friday drop by 3.17 percent to close at $12.52 apiece as investor sentiment was weighed down by news that it was slapped with a class action lawsuit by none other than the Justice Department over claims that it was filling millions of unlawful opioid prescriptions.

The suit, which was filed in a court in Illinois on Friday, alleged that Walgreens (NASDAQ:WBA) and its subsidiaries knowingly filled millions of unlawful prescriptions for controlled substances from August 2012 up to present.

Allegedly, Walgreens (NASDAQ:WBA) and its pharmacies filled prescriptions for dangerous and excessive quantities of opioids, including early refills among other prescriptions despite clear “red flags.”

The lawsuit also alleged that the pharmacy giant ignored substantial evidence from multiple sources that its stores were dispensing unlawful prescriptions, including from its own pharmacists and internal data, the suit claims.

Overall, WBA ranks 10th on our list of firms that took a hit on Friday. While we acknowledge the potential of WBA as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is as promising as WBA but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.