Why West Pharmaceutical Services (WST) Crashed Last Week?

We recently published a list of These Were Last Week’s 10 Worst Performers. In this article, we are going to take a look at where West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc. (NYSE:WST) stands against other last week’s worst performers.

Ten companies posted double-digit declines last week amid a series of dismal earnings performance and outlook guidance that weighed down on investor sentiment, bucking an overall strength of Wall Street’s main indices on a week’s basis.

Over the past five trading days, the Dow Jones registered growth of 0.5 percent, the S&P 500 increased by 1.47 percent, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq rallied by 2.57 percent.

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

A closeup of multiple drug containment systems in an array of colors.

West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc. (NYSE:WST)

West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc. (NYSE:WST) lost 33 percent of its value in just a week’s trading, ending Friday at $214.73 apiece versus the $321.55 on February 7 as investors sold off positions following a drop in its net income coupled with a pessimistic outlook for this year.

On Thursday, West Pharmaceutical (NYSE:WST) said net income for the fourth quarter of 2024 declined by 5 percent to $130.1 million from $137 million in the same period in 2023, while net income for the full year 2024 declined by 16.97 percent to $492.7 million from $593.4 million in 2023.

Net sales for the quarter, however, were higher by 2 percent to $748.8 million from $732 million, while net sales for the full-year period dipped by 1.9 percent to $2.893 billion from $2.949 billion year-on-year.

For this year, the company said it targets diluted earnings per share to settle between $5.97 to $6.17, a significant drop from the $6.69 reported in 2024.

Overall, WST ranks 1st on our list of last week’s worst performers. While we acknowledge the potential of WST 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 more promising than WST 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.