Should You Invest in UnitedHealth?

Aaditya Patel
3 min readMar 31, 2021

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PHOTO CREDIT: UnitedHealth

OVERVIEW

UnitedHealth Group Incorporation is a company based in the United States. The company operates a healthcare company in the United States. The company offers health care plans for individual customers as well as large employers in the public and private sector. The company also offers Medicaid plans for its customers. In addition to this, the company also offers pharmaceutical services. The company was founded in 1977.

Why You Should?

  1. UnitedHealth is an extremely low-risk and recession-proof investment option in an investor’s portfolio due to the essential nature of the products and services that it sells. Health insurance is extremely essential in the United States and customers are not likely to reduce their plans just because of rough economic times. This will benefit the company and its investors.
  2. UnitedHealth is a one-stop-shop for healthcare services. The company offers everything from unique plans for all of its customers as well as many other services that it offers to healthcare professionals. This wide range of products will benefit the company as it will have an easier time retaining customers and gaining new ones as well. This will also benefit investors in the company.
  3. The healthcare industry continues to have strong growth. As the healthcare industry grows, so will UnitedHealth as consumers will need more expensive or more healthcare plans. This strong growth will cause a rise in the company’s revenues and profits and will also benefit the company’s investors.
  4. The company has seen rising revenues and profits over the past couple of financial years due to the reasons mentioned above. This has helped the company grow across all of its markets. This has also benefited the company’s investors, who have seen a strong dividend continue to grow and strong stock returns as well. This will benefit the company and its investors. In the financial year of 2020, the company reported revenues of around 257.14 billion and profits of around 15.4 billion. Both of these metrics are higher than the financial year of 2019 when they had revenues of around 242.16 billion and profits of around 13.84 billion.
PHOTO CREDIT: Yahoo Finance

Why You Should Not?

  1. UnitedHealth faces tough competition in the healthcare insurance industry. Some of this competition includes Cigna, CVS, Humana, and Amgen. This competition might hurt the company and its investors in the future.
  2. UnitedHealth might have to face many political issues. Under a Biden administration, both parties would want to work together to lower health care costs for their constituents. If this happens, UnitedHealth might see a drop in their revenues and profits as healthcare costs will decrease due to legislation. This will hurt the company and its investors.

MY OPINION

I think that UnitedHealth is a great long-term investment due to its position as a low-risk investment, a wide range of products and services, a growing healthcare industry, as well as rising revenues and profits. However, tough competition and a negative political environment might hurt the company and its investors in the future.

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Aaditya Patel

Aaditya Patel is a writer who publishes analysis on companies publicly traded on the NYSE. Follow him @the_investing787 on Instagram for summary posts.