UnitedHealth Best Performing Dow Stock This Year

After a slow start to the year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has perked up since March and now stands at just over 18,000, up 3.3% for the year to date. Of the Dow 30 stocks, 19 have posted gains so far in 2016, and the stock with the biggest gain is UnitedHealth Group Inc. (NYSE: UNH), up 14.02% to $134.13.

UnitedHealth’s stock posted its 52-week high of $135.11 last Wednesday after the company reported first-quarter earnings on Tuesday. Adjusted diluted quarterly earnings per share (EPS) came in at $1.81 on revenues of $44.53 billion. In the same period a year ago, UnitedHealth reported EPS of $1.55 on $35.76 billion in revenue. The consensus estimates called for EPS of $1.72 on revenues of $35.76 billion.

The company has said it plans to pull out of nearly all Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) exchanges in 2017. The company currently offers insurance in 34 states but plans to cut that number to just a “handful” according to CEO Stephen Hemsley. On the company’s conference call last week Hemsley said that the “smaller overall market size and shorter-term, higher-risk profile within this market segment continue to suggest we cannot broadly serve it on an effective and sustained basis.” UnitedHealth expects to lose $650 million on the plans in 2016.

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While the public relations impact of UnitedHealth’s decision has been sharp, it’s a bit harder to judge the impact on the exchanges. In Connecticut, for example, UnitedHealth insured a total of 1,601 people on the state’s exchange. That was about 1% of approximately 116,000 Connecticut residents enrolled in exchange-based plans. In Missouri, another state UnitedHealth is leaving, there is just 1 enrollee. North Carolina and Louisiana, however, have 53,936 and 31,340 enrollees, respectively, who will be affected by the company’s decision to pull out of the exchanges.

By UnitedHealth’s own count the company has insured more than 616,000 Americans in all its individual plans in the 34 states, not just the exchange-based plans. The medical loss ratio for all 34 states was 95.1%, about 7.3% higher than the company planned for. In 8 states the loss exceeded 100% of the premiums paid.