UNH

Dividend Growth Idea UnitedHealth Group Boosts Guidance

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Image Shown: Dividend growth idea UnitedHealth Group Inc has seen its share price surge higher over the past year. By Callum Turcan One of our favorite dividend growth ideas is UnitedHealth Group Inc (UNH). The company runs an expansive portfolio of domestic health care operations including large health insurance businesses, pharmacy benefits managers (‘PBMs’) and specialty pharmacy businesses, outpatient surgical centers, in-home health care service providers, analytical services, and services geared towards administrative activities, among many other operations involving health care. Its four business reporting segments are Optum Health (national health care delivery platform), Optum Insight (services, analytics, and platforms aimed at generating insights and efficiencies while improving patient outcomes), Optum Rx (portfolio of pharmacy care services), and UnitedHealthcare (portfolio … Read more

Shares of Newsletter Portfolio Idea Johnson & Johnson Off to the Races!

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Image Shown: Shares of Johnson & Johnson, an idea in both our Best Ideas Newsletter and Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolios, are shifting higher. By Callum Turcan On April 19, Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) reported first-quarter earnings for 2022 that missed consensus top-line estimates but beat consensus bottom-line estimates. The company lowered its guidance for 2022, but shares of JNJ rallied during regular trading hours that day as its underlying performance remains strong. J&J suspended guidance for its coronavirus (‘COVID-19’) vaccine sales, though we want to stress that these sales were not needle-moving as it concerns our estimate of the company’s fair value. The firm was selling the vaccines on a not-for-profit basis and didn’t intend to change that until the … Read more

Undervalued PINS, SNAP Rallying; FB Incredibly Mispriced, and Refreshed Consumer Discretionary Reports

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Image: Valuentum’s Periodic Screener, February 4.  — By Valuentum Analysts — Two of the most undervalued stocks in our coverage Pinterest, Inc. (PINS) and Snap Inc. (SNAP) are indicated to rally hard February 4 after issuing positive earnings reports, providing further evidence of the importance of the discounted cash flow process and the magnet that intrinsic value estimates are to stock prices. Pinterest is indicated up ~14%, while Snap is indicated up ~47% based on the latest information we have. — The refreshed Valuentum periodic data screener is now available for download on our website (it can be found in the ‘Stock Screens’ section in the left column of our website). The periodic data screener, which also includes updated fair value estimates on … Read more

Johnson & Johnson’s Pending Split-Up, Talc Liabilities, New CEO Add Complexity to a Once-Clean Dividend Growth Story

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  Image Shown: J&J continues to face legal liabilities due to talcum powder lawsuits. Image Source: Mike Mozart.  By Brian Nelson, CFA Johnson & Johnson’s (JNJ) dividend growth story has become much more complicated in recent years. On a price-only basis, shares of the consumer and pharma giant haven’t been nearly as impressive as that of technology names, but the company still has put up a nice 45% price-only return the past five years, further bolstered by a continuous stream of quarterly dividend payments. J&J yields ~2.6% at the time of this writing, and the company reluctantly remains the bedrock of the Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio, at least for now. The Split-Up Before we dig into J&J’s fourth-quarter 2021 results, … Read more

Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater

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Image: Erica Nicol Takeaways: Junk tech should continue to collapse, but the stylistic area of large cap growth and big cap tech should remain resilient. Moderately elevated levels of inflation coupled with interest rates hovering at all-time lows isn’t a terrible combination. In fact, it’s not bad at all. The markets are digesting the huge gains of the past few years so far in 2022, and the excesses in ARKK funds, crypto, SPACs, and meme stocks are being rid from the system. Our best ideas are “outperforming” the very benchmarks that are outperforming everyone else. The BIN portfolio is down 6.4% and the DGN portfolio is down 3.2% year to date. The SPY is down 7.8%, while the average investor … Read more

Valuentum’s Brian Nelson in CFA Institute’s ‘Enterprising Investor’

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From CFA Institute’s ‘Enterprising Investor’: — By Brian Nelson, CFA — “I couldn’t sleep. I knew something was wrong. The numbers just didn’t make sense. For years, pipeline energy analysts seemed to be adjusting their valuation models for pipeline master limited partnership (MLP) stocks in order to explain what was happening to the price. — But why? Why adjust the models for one set of companies and not for another? Cash is cash and value is the measure of cash going into and out of a business. There aren’t different rules for different companies. Valuation is universal.” — To continue reading >> — —– — About Brian Michael Nelson, CFA Brian Michael Nelson, CFAPresident, Equity Research & ETF AnalysisE-mail: brian@valuentum.com Brian … Read more

Dividend Growth Idea UnitedHealth’s Growth Story Expected to Continue

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Image Shown: Shares of dividend growth idea UnitedHealth Group Inc have surged higher over the past year. The company put up solid performance in 2021 and its guidance for 2022 indicates that its growth trajectory is expected to continue. By Callum Turcan On January 19, UnitedHealth Group Inc (UNH) reported fourth-quarter 2021 earnings that beat both consensus top- and bottom-line estimates. The company’s health insurance business is covered by its ‘UnitedHealthcare’ segment, and its health care provider business is covered by its ‘Optum’ segment. Virtually all of the firm’s revenues come from the U.S. It also reaffirmed its guidance for 2022 in its fourth-quarter earnings report. We continue to be impressed with UnitedHealth and include shares of UNH as an … Read more

Dividend Growth Stocks Soar!

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Dear members: — We’re watching one of the strongest stock market rallies we’ve seen in some time during the trading session December 7. At the time of this writing, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up over 500 points, the S&P is up nearly 100, while the NASDAQ is up a tremendous 440+. We continue to like what we see. — Almost every idea in the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio is up today, led by Chipotle (CMG) +5.9%, PayPal (PYPL) +3.3%, Domino’s (DPZ) +3.1%, Apple (AAPL) +2.9% and Alphabet (GOOG) +2.9%. — We’re loving the moves by Valuentum-style stocks today, and we’re even more excited to report that every idea in the Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio is advancing today, as shown below. We know … Read more

Asset Allocators Fail, Advisors Should Pick Stocks, Save Investors $34 Billion Annually

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  Image: The area of large cap growth has trounced that of the 60/40 stock/bond portfolio for more than a decade. Image Source: Morningstar. By Brian Nelson, CFA We’ve all heard the stories. Professional stock pickers can’t beat a bunch of monkeys throwing darts at the pages of the WSJ. A cows’ investment decisions are just as good as the pros’. Stock prices reflect all available information so not even professionals have an edge (e.g. the efficient markets hypothesis). Most professionals can’t outperform their respective benchmarks, so how could mom and pop? Look at this from one of today’s bloggers: The traditional argument, which you’ve probably heard many times before, goes as follows: since most people (even the professionals) can’t … Read more

Hard Work and the Trust That Binds

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Image Source: Terry Johnson By Brian Nelson, CFA We’ll have our traditional Valuentum Weekly email coming out on Sunday, and I’m excited to say our team is putting the finishing touches on our technology industry update, so we’ll have a whole bunch of fresh reports for you to look at Sunday evening/Monday morning. It’s easy to forget how much we’ve been through the past two years. Often, we forget how helpful the warning that markets were going to crash was the weekend before they did on February 22, 2020, “Is a Stock Market Crash Coming? – Coronavirus Update and P/E Ratios,” how we thought dollar-cost-averaging made sense at the bottom in March 2020, and how we went “all-in” in April … Read more