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Only one Dow stock has fallen by double digits this year: Walgreens.
The drugstore chain has tanked 19 percent this year, a loss nearly 20 times steeper than the second-worst-performing Dow stock, UnitedHealth.
Matt Maley, equity strategist at Miller Tabak, told CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Tuesday that this looks like a “broken stock.”
“It’s just broken down too many support levels. The last couple of months it’s seen a series of lower highs and lower lows. It’s broken below its multiyear trendline going back to 2012, and it’s also broken below its lows from both 2018 and 2014,” he said.
The stock dug even deeper into the red on Tuesday, tumbling 13 percent in its worst daily performance since 2014, following disappointing earnings and weak guidance. It also notched a new 52-week low.
Such severe losses may be setting the stock up for a short-term pop, though, adds Maley.
“If you look at its weekly RSI chart, it’s getting very, very oversold, so much so that it’s at levels where we usually see decent-sized bounces,” said Maley. “I wouldn’t want to short the stock or sell the stock here, and even the short-term traders with high risk tolerance might even want to buy it here for a flip over the next couple of weeks.”
Erin Gibbs, portfolio manager at S&P Global, is more optimistic on the stock’s outlook, though she concedes it does face its fair share of headwinds.
“It is very challenging. It’s definitely facing tougher competition from the likes of CVS and Amazon with prescriptions. I’d say the one thing is that it has phenomenal cash flow, so it can weather the storms, it can weather a few quarters of turning around,” Gibbs said on “Trading Nation” on Tuesday.
Walgreens reported free cash flow of $411 million for its quarter ended Feb. 28. In the same quarter a year earlier, it reported $1.9 billion in free cash flow.
“It is a turnaround story,” said Gibbs. “They’ve entered into about a dozen online partnerships to really ramp up their online sales, so we’re looking for that increased growth, but it’s probably not going to be for another four, maybe five quarters.”
Disclosure: Walgreens is held in a portfolio Gibbs sub-advises.
