Jan 27 (Reuters) – HCA Healthcare on Tuesday forecast its profit for 2026 above Wall Street estimates after reporting better-than-expected \u200bquarterly earnings on robust medical care demand.<\/p>\n
Hospital operators such \u200cas HCA are benefiting from higher utilization of the government’s Medicare insurance plans, particularly \u200cwhen older adults who are covered undergo surgical procedures.<\/p>\n
As subsidies that were present during the COVID-19 pandemic under individual Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) plans expire this year, patients availing elective procedures, preventive care visits \u2060and diagnostic services are \u200cexpected to increase while their insurance is still affordable.<\/p>\n
Raking in patients who are insured under government-backed plans \u200dprovides reliable reimbursement for medical services, compared to uninsured cases that often result in uncompensated care, which amass costs and bad debt for hospital \u200boperators.<\/p>\n
Shares of Nashville, Tennessee-based HCA climbed nearly 5% in premarket \u200ctrading.<\/p>\n
HCA’s revenue from same-facility per equivalent admission – or the combined volume of inpatient and outpatient admissions – increased 2.9%.<\/p>\n
However, same-facility inpatient surgeries were flat, while same-facility outpatient surgeries declined 0.5% in the quarter ended December 31.<\/p>\n
HCA reported total revenue of $19.51 billion in the fourth quarter, \u2060missing expectations of $19.68 billion.<\/p>\n
On an adjusted \u200bbasis, the company posted a profit \u200bof $8.01 per share, beating analysts’ estimate of $7.46 per share.<\/p>\n
The company expects 2026 profit in the range of $29.10 to $31.50 per \u200dshare, the midpoint \u2060of which is above analysts’ average estimate of $29.46 per share, according to data compiled by LSEG.<\/p>\n
The company also authorized \u2060a share repurchase program for up to $10 billion of its outstanding common stock.<\/p>\n
(Reporting \u200cby Padmanabhan Ananthan and Christy Santhosh in Bengaluru; Editing \u200cby Shilpi Majumdar and Maju Samuel)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jan 27 (Reuters) – HCA Healthcare on Tuesday forecast its profit for 2026 above Wall Street estimates after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[120836,30253,97,252,253,30255,48182,205251,205252,28452,6300,144721,83419],"class_list":["post-433268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-diagnostic-services","tag-hca-healthcare","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-hospital-operators","tag-medical-care","tag-medicare-insurance-plans","tag-outpatient-surgeries","tag-preventive-care","tag-quarterly-earnings","tag-uncompensated-care","tag-wall-street-estimates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}