HCA Holdings (HCA) Stock Closed Up as Hospital Sector Recovered
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- HCA Holdings (HCA) - Get Report stock closed up 3.10% to $67.32 on Friday, after two healthcare companies assured investors that the Affordable Care Act was not hurting their businesses.
After UnitedHealthGroup (UNH) said it was considering dropping out of Obamacare exchanges, both Aetna (AET) and Anthem (ANTM) reiterated their 2015 earnings projections on Friday.
"As a leader during this time of unprecedented transformation in healthcare, Anthem remains committed to enhancing access to high quality, affordable healthcare for all of our members inside and outside of the insurance exchanges and continuing our dialogue with policymakers and regulators regarding how we can improve the stability of the individual market," CEO Joseph Swedish said in a statement on Friday.
Both hospital and healthcare stocks reversed their earlier declines on Friday, Reuters reports.
Based in Nashville, HCA is a health care services company that operates hospitals and other health centers.
Separately, TheStreet Ratings team rates HCA HOLDINGS INC as a Hold with a ratings score of C. TheStreet Ratings Team has this to say about their recommendation:
We rate HCA HOLDINGS INC (HCA) a HOLD. The primary factors that have impacted our rating are mixed - some indicating strength, some showing weaknesses, with little evidence to justify the expectation of either a positive or negative performance for this stock relative to most other stocks. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its revenue growth and solid stock price performance. However, as a counter to these strengths, we also find weaknesses including unimpressive growth in net income, weak operating cash flow and poor profit margins.
Highlights from the analysis by TheStreet Ratings Team goes as follows:
- Despite its growing revenue, the company underperformed as compared with the industry average of 10.2%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues slightly increased by 6.9%. This growth in revenue does not appear to have trickled down to the company's bottom line, displayed by a decline in earnings per share.
- After a year of stock price fluctuations, the net result is that HCA's price has not changed very much. Although its weak earnings growth may have played a role in this flat result, don't lose sight of the fact that the performance of the overall market, as measured by the S&P 500 Index, was essentially similar. Despite the fact that it has already risen in the past year, there is currently no conclusive evidence that warrants the purchase or sale of this stock.
- Net operating cash flow has declined marginally to $1,101.00 million or 2.39% when compared to the same quarter last year. In addition, when comparing the cash generation rate to the industry average, the firm's growth is significantly lower.
- The company, on the basis of change in net income from the same quarter one year ago, has significantly underperformed compared to the Health Care Providers & Services industry average, but is greater than that of the S&P 500. The net income has decreased by 13.3% when compared to the same quarter one year ago, dropping from $518.00 million to $449.00 million.
- You can view the full analysis from the report here: HCA
Any reference to TheStreet Ratings and its underlying recommendation does not reflect the opinion of Jim Cramer, TheStreet or any of its contributors.