UnitedHealth (UNH) Received its Third Buy in a Row


After Argus Research and Morgan Stanley gave UnitedHealth (NYSE: UNH) a Buy rating last month, the company received another Buy, this time from Oppenheimer. Analyst Michael Wiederhorn maintained a Buy rating on UnitedHealth today and set a price target of $300. The company’s shares closed yesterday at $248.06.

Wiederhorn noted:

“UNH reported 4Q:18 adjusted EPS of $3.28 (GAAP: $3.10) vs. OPCO/Street estimates of $3.19/$3.21. Adj. results exclude $0.18/shr of amortization. Optum continues to drive overall UNH earnings growth, fueled by 70 bps of margin expansion. Overall UnitedHealthcare trends were consistent with those of recent quarters, although the MLR of 82.2% was slightly higher than OPCO/Street (81.7%/81.6%E). Due to the solid results, UNH maintained recently issued FY2019 EPS guidance of $14.40-$14.70.”

According to TipRanks.com, Wiederhorn is a top 100 analyst with an average return of 14.1% and a 66.7% success rate. Wiederhorn covers the Services sector, focusing on stocks such as Cross Country Healthcare, Addus Homecare Corp, and Community Health.

UnitedHealth has an analyst consensus of Strong Buy, with a price target consensus of $305.82, a 23.3% upside from current levels. In a report issued on January 4, Barclays also maintained a Buy rating on the stock with a $279 price target.

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Based on UnitedHealth’s latest earnings release for the quarter ending September 30, the company reported a quarterly revenue of $56.56 billion and net profit of $3.19 billion. In comparison, last year the company earned revenue of $52.07 billion and had a net profit of $3.62 billion.

Based on the recent corporate insider activity of 179 insiders, corporate insider sentiment is neutral on the stock. Earlier this month, Richard Burke, a Director at UNH bought 5,000 shares for a total of $137,950.

TipRanks has tracked 36,000 company insiders and found that a few of them are better than others when it comes to timing their transactions. See which 3 stocks are most likely to make moves following their insider activities.

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