Tale of Two HC Services Prints: MOH & DGX

Research evidence excerpt

Tale of Two HC Services Prints: MOH & DGX

IdeaMreducing its Marketplace footprint in 2027 (~$1B of premium revenue). The

incremental HIX headwind (-$1.50/sh) fully offset continued Medicare improvement,

where trend was 4% versus the company's 6% assumption. Importantly, execution in

Medicaid remains solid and the gap between rates and medical cost trends

continues to normalize, setting up a potentially more favorable outlook for 2027.

MOH also introduced a path to approximately $10.50 of 2027 EPS (vs. current Cons

$9.41), starting from 2026 guidance of at least $5.25 and adding back roughly $1.50

from one-time Florida Kids Medicaid implementation costs, $1.00 from MAPD

losses, $0.75 from Marketplace losses (assuming breakeven pre-tax margins), and

$2.00 from operating leverage. Any improvement in Medicaid or Medicare MLR

would represent additional upside. While the added transparency is helpful, we

believe several assumptions, notably around operating leverage and Marketplace

profitability, may prove optimistic, at least at this juncture.

Distilling Utilization Commentary from Latest Prints: Today's reports from MOH

and DGX offered a latest read on broader utilization dynamics, where datapoints

from hospitals, MCOs, and medtech companies QTD have been admittedly

conflicting. MOH highlighted that Medicaid was in-line while Medicare trend was

tracking better than internal expectations. Meanwhile, Marketplace

underperformance reflected a worse-than-expected acuity mix, an issue that appears

somewhat more unique to MOH as a smaller player in HIX. Overall, there were

several moving pieces, with Medicare the only clearer area on utilization

normalization, consistent with others we have heard from QTD. Meanwhile, DGX