5 Must-Buy Laggards of 2025 With Double-Digit Short-Term Price Upside

The artificial intelligence (AI)-driven astonishing bull run of 2023 and 2024 has continued this year too. Despite the overstretched valuation of U.S. stocks, especially technology stocks, Wall Street maintained its northward journey in 2025 barring, some minor fluctuations. 

The imposition of President Donald Trump’s restrictive tariff and trade policies, lingering global geopolitical conflicts and recent signs of cracks in the U.S. labor market have failed to deter investors from risky assets like equities. 

Moreover, the CME FedWatch interest rate derivative tool currently shows a 100% probability of a 25-basis-point interest rate cut by the Fed at its FOMC meeting scheduled this week. A low-interest-rate regime should benefit stock investors. 

Despite these positives, several large-cap AI stocks have given negative returns year to date. Surprisingly, a handful of these stocks with a favorable Zacks Rank currently offer strong price upside potential in the short term. 

Five such stocks are: Assurant Inc. AIZ, DocuSign Inc. DOCU, Duolingo Inc. DUOL, West Pharmaceutical Services Inc. WST and Zebra Technologies Corp. ZBRA. Each of our picks currently sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

The chart below shows the price performance of our five picks year to date.

Assurant Inc.

Assurant is focused on inorganic and organic growth strategies. For 2025, AIZ expects adjusted EBITDA, excluding reportable catastrophes, to increase modestly. While Global Housing should gain from improved performance in Homeowners, Global Lifestyle stands to gain from growth across Connected Living and Global Automotive. 

These strengths validate the effectiveness of AIZ’s long-term strategy of focusing on higher growth fee-based and capital-light businesses. AIZ plans to deploy capital, mainly to fund business growth and return capital to its shareholders. A lower debt level and improved leverage ratio add strength.

Assurant has an expected revenue and earnings growth rate of 5.7% and 5.8%, respectively, for the current year. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the current-year earnings has improved 3.5% over the last 30 days.

The short-term average price target of brokerage firms for the stock represents an increase of 12.4% from the last closing price of $213.01. The brokerage target price is currently in the range of $230-$255. This indicates a maximum upside of 19.7% and no downside.

DocuSign Inc.

DocuSign’s strength lies within its subscription revenues and it has accounted for the majority of its top line over the past three years. DOCU continues to translate its selling expenses into international growth efficiently. 

The same can be said about its R&D focus, which has driven product enhancements, improved customer experience and helped retain a growing customer base. DOCU’s strong relationships with tech giants like Salesforce and Microsoft further support this ecosystem. DOCU has deepened its relationships with tech giants such as Salesforce and Microsoft.

DocuSign has an expected revenue and earnings growth rate of 7% and 2.5%, respectively, for the current year (ending January 2026). The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the current-year earnings has improved 2.5% over the last 30 days.

The short-term average price target of brokerage firms for the stock represents an increase of 15.9% from the last closing price of $80.19. The brokerage target price is currently in the range of $70-$124. This indicates a maximum upside of 54.6% and a downside of 12.7%.

Duolingo Inc.

Duolingo operates as a mobile learning platform in the United States, China, the United Kingdom, and internationally. DUOL offers courses in 40 different languages through the Duolingo app. Moreover, DUOL provides a digital language proficiency assessment exam.

DUOL utilizes several AI applications to personalize and automate the learning process, analyze errors and create content. Its Birdbrain AI system analyze real-time user performance. DUOL uses OpenAI’s large language models for content creation. 

Duolingo has an expected revenue and earnings growth rate of 36.2% and 66%, respectively, for the current year. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for current-year earnings has improved 7.6% over the last 60 days.

The average short-term price target of brokerage firms represents an increase of 42.6% from the last closing price of $307.91. The brokerage target price is currently in the range of $239-$600. This indicates a maximum upside of 94.9% and a downside of 22.4%.

West Pharmaceutical Services Inc.

West Pharmaceutical Services has been witnessing improvement in organic revenues. Robust performance by the Proprietary Products segment was encouraging. Strength in HVP and robust growth in the Biologics and Pharma market units during the last reported quarter were also promising. 

WST’s rest of 2025 results are likely to reflect a strong recovery, with year-over-year quarterly sales improvement. This is reflected in WST’s outlook for the year. WST remains committed to seeking new innovative opportunities for acquisition, licensing, partnering or development of products, services and technologies.

WST is the market leader in containment and delivery of injectable medicines. These are among the fastest-growing areas of healthcare, implying strong growth potential. Rising demand for the company’s contract manufacturing services helped the company to partially offset the destocking impact on other business segments.

West Pharmaceutical Services has an expected revenue and earnings growth rate of 4.7% and -0.2%, respectively, for the current year. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for current-year earnings has improved 1.2% over the last 30 days.

The average short-term price target of brokerage firms represents an increase of 26.2% from the last closing price of $253.50. The brokerage target price is currently in the range of $260-$355. This indicates a maximum upside of 40% and no downside.

Zebra Technologies Corp.

Zebra Technologies is benefiting from an increase in sales of mobile computing and data capture solutions within the Enterprise Visibility & Mobility segment. Higher sales of RFID products are boosting the Asset Intelligence & Tracking segment’s performance. 

ZBRA has been focusing on advancing digital capabilities, optimizing supply chain and expanding data analytics capabilities to engage with its customers. ZBRA’s efforts to reward shareholders hold promise. ZBRA is engaged in bolt-on acquisitions to expand its business geographically.

Zebra Technologies has an expected revenue and earnings growth rate of 6.3% and 15.9%, respectively, for the current year. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for current-year earnings has improved 7.5% over the last 60 days.

The average short-term price target of brokerage firms represents an increase of 15.9% from the last closing price of $312.65. The brokerage target price is currently in the range of $300-$412. This indicates a maximum upside of 31.8% and a downside of 4.1%.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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