NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Express Scripts (ESRX) stock is down 1.14% to $87.52 in early-morning trading on Wednesday, amid legal battles with Horizon Pharma (HZNP) and a specialty pharmacy. 

The St. Louis-based pharmacy benefit manager ended its relationship with Linden Care pharmacy on Monday, The New York Times reported. Express Scripts was taking action against "captive" pharmacies that promote a single manufacturer's products, a spokeswoman told the Times.

On Tuesday, Linden Care pharmacy asked a New York federal court to block Express's action, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Additionally, Express Scripts filed a $140 million lawsuit against Horizon, which states that Horizon did not pay certain rebates to Express Scripts, the Journal reported. 

Less than 5% of Horizon's net sales from prescriptions are filled from Linden Care prescriptions and processed by Express Scripts, the company said in a statement today.

"Express Scripts is not only a pharmacy benefit manager that has significant control over prescriptions that flow to specialty pharmacies, it also operates its own mail-order pharmacy and thus is a direct competitor of small, independent specialty pharmacies throughout the United States," CEO Timothy Walbert said in a statement. "This competitive role, in our view, creates a clear conflict of interest."

Separately, TheStreet Ratings team rates EXPRESS SCRIPTS HOLDING CO as a Buy with a ratings score of A-. TheStreet Ratings Team has this to say about their recommendation:

We rate EXPRESS SCRIPTS HOLDING CO (ESRX) a BUY. This is based on the convergence of positive investment measures, which should help this stock outperform the majority of stocks that we rate. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its impressive record of earnings per share growth, increase in net income, good cash flow from operations, solid stock price performance and notable return on equity. We feel its strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had generally high debt management risk by most measures that we evaluated.

Highlights from the analysis by TheStreet Ratings Team goes as follows:

  • EXPRESS SCRIPTS HOLDING CO has improved earnings per share by 24.4% in the most recent quarter compared to the same quarter a year ago. The company has demonstrated a pattern of positive earnings per share growth over the past two years. We feel that this trend should continue. During the past fiscal year, EXPRESS SCRIPTS HOLDING CO increased its bottom line by earning $2.66 versus $2.31 in the prior year. This year, the market expects an improvement in earnings ($5.53 versus $2.66).
  • The company, on the basis of net income growth from the same quarter one year ago, has significantly outperformed against the S&P 500 and exceeded that of the Health Care Providers & Services industry average. The net income increased by 13.6% when compared to the same quarter one year prior, going from $582.30 million to $661.70 million.
  • Net operating cash flow has significantly increased by 82.25% to $793.00 million when compared to the same quarter last year. In addition, EXPRESS SCRIPTS HOLDING CO has also vastly surpassed the industry average cash flow growth rate of 3.68%.
  • The stock has not only risen over the past year, it has done so at a faster pace than the S&P 500, reflecting the earnings growth and other positive factors similar to those we have cited here. Looking ahead, the stock's rise over the last year has already helped drive it to a level which is relatively expensive compared to the rest of its industry. We feel, however, that the other strengths this company displays justify these higher price levels.
  • The return on equity has improved slightly when compared to the same quarter one year prior. This can be construed as a modest strength in the organization. Compared to other companies in the Health Care Providers & Services industry and the overall market on the basis of return on equity, EXPRESS SCRIPTS HOLDING CO has underperformed in comparison with the industry average, but has exceeded that of the S&P 500.
  • You can view the full analysis from the report here: ESRX

Any reference to TheStreet Ratings and its underlying recommendation does not reflect the opinion of Jim Cramer, TheStreet or any of its contributors.