UnitedHealth Delivers Healthy Dividend Hike and Major Stock Buyback Plan

UnitedHealth Group claims to cover more than 85 million people, throughout all 50 U.S. states and more than 125 other nations. The one thing that many investors and clients fail to remember about UnitedHealth is that this is now a member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

UnitedHealth’s board of directors has authorized the company to pay a cash dividend of $0.375 per share. What matters to investors is that this is a 34% increase in the dividend rate from the prior quarterly dividend of $0.28 per share. The new higher dividend is to be paid on June 25, 2014, to holders of record as of the close of business on June 16, 2014.

We also have some serious buyback news as well. UnitedHealth’s board of directors also has renewed the share buyback plan for up to 100 million shares of common stock over time. This new plan will replace prior authorization announced in June 2013. As of May 31, 2014, there were approximately 63 million shares remaining under the prior authorization.

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What stands out here is that company had approximately a billion common shares outstanding, so this is a 10% share buyback. At current prices, this new 100 million share buyback represents a buyback of close to $8 billion. Its market cap is also about $80 billion for a reference.

UnitedHealth trades close to 4.5 million shares per day. The old dividend yield was about 1.4%, and the new dividend will generate a yield of 1.88%.