UnitedHealth Group reported results well above analysts' expectations and substantially raised its earnings projection for the year, moves likely to bolster Wall Street's belief in the healthcare company's financial turnaround.

The announcement comes a little more than a year after Chief Executive Officer Stephen Hemsley returned to the top job, promising major changes after a financial meltdown.

For the second quarter of 2026, UnitedHealth reported net income of $5.48 billion, or $6.04 a share. That compared with net income of $3.41 billion, or $3.74 a share, a year earlier.

On the back of that strength, UnitedHealth raised its guidance for full-year adjusted earnings to a range of $19.50 to $20 a share, from a prior floor of $18.25. The FactSet consensus was $18.49.

"It's almost like we're doing a reset on guidance," said Wayne DeVeydt, UnitedHealth's chief financial officer, in an interview. The company had been cautious about expectations after the first quarter, but now feels that the trends it saw then are durable, he said.

UnitedHealth's adjusted earnings of $6.38 a share in the second quarter topped the $4.91 a share projected by analysts polled by FactSet.

Under Hemsley, its longtime prior CEO who returned to the top job after a stint serving solely as chairman, UnitedHealth has replaced much of its top management, pared its sprawling Optum physician footprint and shrunk enrollment in its key Medicare plans after years of aggressive growth, among other changes.

UnitedHealth's second-quarter medical-loss ratio, a closely watched measure that represents the share of premium revenue spent on healthcare costs, was 86.7%. The FactSet analyst projection was 88.4%.

The company said in a press release the result reflected changed plan designs, higher premium payments and tighter management of medical costs.

DeVeydt said the plan-design changes included shifts from copayments to coinsurance, which requires enrollees to pay a percentage of the cost of care out of their pockets. He also said the company is deploying artificial-intelligence tools to detect inappropriate payments and counter AI technology used by medical billers. "We're able to use AI to identify what we think are odd anomalies," he said.

UnitedHealth executives have said the company's roughly $1.5 billion investments in AI this year will help cut costs and improve performance. UnitedHealth recently announced a partnership with Anthropic.

DeVeydt said cost trends in the company's Medicare business are coming in lower than projected, partly because UnitedHealth had baked in extra margin for potential costs, such as tariff impacts, which haven't materialized.

In Medicaid, costs are running about where the company expected, or slightly better, he said. States have bolstered their Medicaid payments, but UnitedHealth still expects that business to run at a small loss this year.

But in UnitedHealth's employer-plan business, spending growth is above 11%, which is higher than projected. DeVeydt flagged the growing expense of a federally mandated arbitration process intended to block surprise medical bills. Insurers including UnitedHealth have sued healthcare providers over their use of the setup, which they have said has been flooded with inappropriate claims.

Revenue for the second quarter was $112 billion, compared with $111.6 billion a year earlier.

Write to Anna Wilde Mathews at Anna.Mathews@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 16, 2026 05:55 ET (09:55 GMT)

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