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David Crowther5/22/25

Wall Street has cut its UnitedHealth EPS forecasts by >20% for each of the next 3 years

UnitedHealth has been rocked by negative headline after negative headline in the last five weeks, with yesterday’s latest — a report that alleged it coordinated with nursing homes to reduce hospitalizations — contributing to another 6% fall in the company’s stock. News that the regulator will increase its audits of Medicare Advantage, which broke late last night, is now putting further pressure on UnitedHealth, again in the red in premarket trading.

In the wake of the deluge of unfavorable news, management change, and no financial guidance for the coming year, Wall Street analysts have been slashing estimates for America’s largest healthcare insurance provider — and with little information to go off, they haven’t discriminated much between the next few years.

Data from FactSet reveals that the mean earnings-per-share estimate for 2025 has been slashed by 24% so far this year. The forecast for 2026 is down 22%, while the average evaluation of 2027 EPS also fell 23%.

Those are pretty huge cuts, but they haven’t kept pace with the stock’s decline, which has slumped 48% since April 16. That leaves the stock on just ~13x this year’s earnings, a significant derating since the market’s evaluation in mid-April, when it traded on ~19.5x price to earnings.

Related reading: Move over Tesla, UnitedHealth is the battleground stock for retail traders this week as options trading explodes

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Markets close out 2025’s last full week of trading on a cheerful note

Stocks rallied for the second day in a row, with the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 all closing higher, giving traders the early Christmas gift they desired.

Man is happy about his saw

markets

Health insurance stocks lose steam as Trump says he’ll lobby insurers for lower prices

Shares of health insurance companies dropped Friday afternoon, as President Trump said he would ask insurers to meet with him in the coming weeks to seek lower prices.

Stocks including Humana, UnitedHealthcare, Cigna, CVS Health, and Elevance Health all either pared gains or went further into the red after Trump’s remarks, which came at the end of a press event to announce pricing deals with nine drugmakers.

“I’m going to call a meeting of the big insurance companies that have gotten so rich,” Trump said, noting that he would lobby them for lower prices.

“I would say that maybe with one talk, they would be willing to cut their prices by 50, 60, or 70%. They’ve made a fortune.”

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Max Knoblauch8h

Rivian’s surge continues as stock reaches highest level since December 2023 on analyst upgrades

Shares of EV maker Rivian are on pace to close up double digits for the second day in a row on Friday as bullish investors pour into the stock following analyst upgrades.

Rivian shares were up more than 10% on Friday afternoon, with the stock climbing to its highest level since December 2023.

Webush’s Dan Ives boosted his Rivian price target by 56% to $25 in a note on Friday morning. The analyst wrote that 2026 is a “prove-me” year for the automaker, with its lower-cost R2 model set to launch in the first half.

Ives’s note follows a separate optimistic bit of analysis from Baird, which also boosted its Rivian price target to $25 in a note on Thursday.

If today's gains hold, Friday will mark the third day of double-digit gains for Rivian in the past six trading days. An “AI Day” event that saw the automaker detail autonomous updates and tease a robotaxi plan started the recent run.

markets

The neoclouds are shooting back up into the stratosphere

Investors’ faith in tech CEOs’ pursuit of digital God has seemingly been restored for now, sparking an intense rally in the speculative AI players that had been in full-on meltdown mode over concerns that the boom had passed its best-before date.

The data center companies colloquially known as the “neoclouds” — CoreWeave, Nebius, IREN, and Cipher Mining — are up more than double digits over the past two sessions, as of 10:40 a.m. ET.

The past 48 hours have brought a steady drumbeat of positive news for the AI theme.

CoreWeave received a vote of confidence from Wall Street as Citi resumed coverage with a buy rating and price target of $135. Oracle, the epicenter of AI credit concerns, has seen a reversal in its fortunes as it nears an acquisition of TikTok’s US operations. And OpenAI’s fundraising efforts appear be going so well that its reported valuation has gone up in back-to-back days.

Before that, Micron’s earnings reaffirmed the intense demand for AI compute, which continues to outstrip supply — a positive sign for the neoclouds. The macro backdrop is also turning perhaps a bit more in favor of lower interest rates, as CPI inflation came in well below expectations.

Snoop Dogg Performs At OVO Hydro Glasgow

Marijuana rescheduling could mean more investment in US weed stocks. There aren’t many ways in.

“Yes, institutional capital will go into the underlying names. The question is: How fast?" one weed company chairman said.

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