5 of Last Week's Biggest Losers

There's never a shortage of losers in the stock market. Let's take a closer look at five of this past week's biggest sinkers.

Source: Barron's.

Nuance Communications suffered its sharp slide on Friday after posting disappointing quarterly results. The pioneer of speech recognition came up short on the bottom line, but the real dagger came in the form of hosing down its bottom-line projections for the near term.

SandRidge Energy also ran low on fuel after downgrades by analysts at Ladenburg Thalmann on Monday and JPMorgan on Tuesday. Activist investors are trying to shake up the oil and gas producer's leadership, but the company is now warning that replacing its board would lead to a technical default of its credit agreement on its senior notes.

TriQuint Semiconductor suffered its double shot of analysts downgrades, as Longbow and Needham talked down the company's prospects after issuing soft guidance. TriQuint is projecting a sharp sequential drip in revenue and a big deficit. Wall Street's consensus was calling for breakeven results on a much smaller sequential top-line decline.

Baidu slipped after posting uninspiring quarterly financials. China's leading search engine suffered contracting profit margins and offered up ho-hum guidance. TH Capital downgraded Baidu after the report.

Finally, Star Scientific suffered a 10% slide a week earlier after disputing claims TheStreet.com made on its anatabine research and the initial results of the ASAP Human Thyroid Health Study. The columnist fired back a day later. The fireworks have subsided, and there were no material developments this past week, but confidence is still rattled. The stock suffered another double-digit percentage decline this time.