Goldman Sachs Said Buy a Year Ago. This Stock Went on to Lose 61%.
Goldman Sachs named the right threat, slashed its price target by half, and still held a Buy rating on FMC. What followed over the next year exposed just how costly that stubborn optimism turned out to be.
On October 29, 2025, FMC (NYSE:FMC | FMC Price Prediction) reported third-quarter results with the stock at $25.68. By the next day’s close it had fallen to $15.53. Then on November 3, Goldman Sachs cut its price target from $43 to $19, a 55.8% reduction, and kept its Buy rating.
Since the October 31, 2025 close, FMC has lost 60.9% on a dividend-adjusted basis. Over the same stretch, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY) gained 11.2%.
Goldman cut its target by more than half. The cut needed to go much deeper.
Goldman’s Case for Holding On Through the Generic Storm
Goldman’s case rested on a split quarter. FMC beat on EBITDA, and adjusted EPS came in at $0.89 against a $0.8548 estimate. Goldman also pointed out the threat directly: generic competition in Latin America had turned out far worse than expected, and the pricing pressure was spreading to FMC’s older, off-patent products. Even after cutting its target, the firm still saw value in the shares.
You can follow the logic. The stock had just taken a historic hit, the target still sat above it, and the core problem was named out loud. Goldman read the threat correctly. It underestimated how much damage the threat would do.
Three Earnings Reports That Broke the Buy Case
February 4, 2026. FMC recorded a $1.36 billion goodwill impairment and posted a quarterly GAAP net loss of $1.72B. Moody’s cut its credit rating to junk. The board started exploring strategic options, including a possible sale. FMC guided 2026 adjusted EPS to $1.63 to $1.89, a 41% decline at the midpoint, as Rynaxypyr, its main insecticide, faced generic competition after losing patent protection.
On the first-quarter call, CEO Pierre Brondeau tied the weakness to “lower grower margins”, which made farmers more willing to buy generics, and set his own deadline: “The real proof of how well our Rynaxypyr strategy is working will be in Q3 and Q4.”
July 29, 2026. Guidance dropped to $1.19 to $1.49, and FMC lined up about $1B in asset sales and licensing deals to pay down debt. The stock sat at $11.05.
October 29, 2026. Brondeau’s deadline arrived, and so did the hinge of this story. FMC reported an adjusted loss of $4.41 per share, missing expectations of a $0.076 profit. Revenue fell 78.34% to $105.9 million. Price cuts on overpriced channel inventory and a new North America rebate model took about $639 million out of revenue. Even without those actions and India, revenue still fell 22%. Shareholders’ equity turned negative at -$19.4 million, against $4.18 billion of debt. Full-year guidance is now an adjusted loss of $3.50 to $3.66 per share.
Rival Analysts Pulled Back Before the Final Blow
Mizuho cut its target to $12 on October 13, 2026. Three days later, Jefferies downgraded the stock to Hold with a $5 target, October 16, less than two weeks before the collapse. That $5 target now is close to where the stock trades. Today the Street counts 6 Buys, 9 Holds, 1 Sell and 1 Strong Sell, with an average target of $8.71.
Verdict: Missed
Goldman named the right problem and badly misjudged its size. Generic pressure in Latin America and on older products caused everything that followed: junk credit, a sale process, wiped-out equity. The stock peaked at $18.00 after the call, never reached $19, and later bottomed at $4.37. A Buy rating that lost 60.9% while the S&P 500 rose counts as a miss.
Where FMC Stock Stands Now
FMC trades at $5.78, near the bottom of its 52-week range of $4.37 to $18.00. Its market cap is about $899 million, against more than four times that in debt.
Bull case: Fourth-quarter guidance calls for adjusted EPS of $0.56 to $0.70, and management says the reset sets up a better 2027 and a stronger 2028.
Bear case: Full-year free cash flow is guided to negative $150 million to negative $350 million, with negative equity and weak grower demand, so lenders have the first claim on any recovery.
The evidence supports the bears. With debt this large relative to equity, small operating misses get magnified in the share price. Until FMC delivers a clean quarter under its new pricing model, the Street’s $8.71 average target looks more like hope than a forecast.
The lesson: when an analyst cuts a target by more than half and keeps the Buy, pay attention to the cut. The rating is what the analyst hopes. The cut is what the analyst found.
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Joel South covers large-cap stocks, dividend investing, and major market trends, with a focus on earnings analysis, valuation, and turning complex data into actionable insights for investors.
He brings more than 15 years of experience as an investor and financial journalist, including 12 years at The Motley Fool, where he served as an investment analyst, Bureau Chief, and later led the Fool.com investing news desk. He has also co-hosted an investing podcast and appeared across TV and radio discussing market trends.
