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UnitedHealth Group, parent of health insurance giant UnitedHealthcare, eked out a fourth quarter profit of $10 million despite a $1.6 billion hit to fourth quarter earnings from a large restructuring charge. In this photo is a general view outside the United Healthcare corporate headquarters on December 4, 2024 in Minnetonka, Minnesota. (Photo by Stephen Maturen\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
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UnitedHealth Group eked out a fourth-quarter profit of $10 million despite a $1.6 billion hit to fourth-quarter earnings from a large restructuring charge as the healthcare giant works on a financial turnaround. <\/p>\n
The company, which last year brought back Stephen Hemsley<\/a> out of retirement to be chief executive officer<\/a>, is working on a financial turnaround that includes \u201cre-focusing on key markets, products and geographies, aligning pricing discipline to account for higher medical trends and the impact of health care policy changes\u201d and \u201cre-baselining operations at Optum,\u201d the company said Tuesday in its fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 earnings report.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThe company completed wide-ranging actions that were included in a fourth quarter charge of $1.6 billion net of taxes, or $1.78 per share,\u201d UnitedHealth said in its earnings report. UnitedHealth is the nation\u2019s largest health insurance company and one of the nation\u2019s largest providers of medical care with UnitedHealthcare and Optum.<\/p>\n UnitedHealth\u2019s fourth quarter net income tumbled to just $10 million, or one penny per share, compared to $5.5 billion in the same period a year ago. Meanwhile, UnitedHealth\u2019s full-year net income was $12 billion, or $13.23 per share, compared to $14.4 billion, or $15.51 a share in 2025. <\/p>\n The restructuring impact to earnings before income taxes was $2.8 billion and included $799 million in final costs of the historic 2024 cyberattack <\/a>on UnitedHealth businesses and $2.5 billion in \u201crestructuring and other\u201d costs. Total impact to net earnings was $1.6 billion once $1.2 billion in net income taxes was subtracted.<\/p>\n \u201cFull year 2025 earnings from operations of $19.0 billion included the impact of a $2.8 billion charge,\u201d UnitedHealth said in its earnings report. \u201cThis charge reflected the final direct costs associated with cyberattack-related activities, divestitures and business exits, and broader restructuring and other actions including loss contract assessments, real estate rationalization and workforce reductions.\u201d<\/p>\n As one example of \u201cbusiness exits,\u201d UnitedHealthcare has joined rival insurers including CVS Health\u2019s Aetna and Humana in pulling back this year<\/a> from sales of Medicare Advantage plans in certain markets after years of expanding their geographic footprints. These plans are trying to control higher costs during a period where regulators aren\u2019t expected to increase what the government pays such plans. <\/p>\n Thus, the health insurer is exiting certain markets<\/a> and expects its Medicare Advantage enrollment to contract by more than 1.1 million older adults, the company said Tuesday. That, along with other market contractions in the company\u2019s commercial risk and Medicaid businesses, will cause total enrollment in all of its medical plans to drop to 47 million this year. Meanwhile, total company revenues are projected to fall 2% in 2026 to about $439 billion, UnitedHealth said in projections released Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n Medicare Advantage plans contract with the federal government to provide traditional coverage available in traditional Medicare plus extra benefits and services to seniors, such as disease management and nurse help hotlines with some also offering vision, dental care and wellness programs.<\/p>\n Such plans, which provide benefits for more than half of the nation\u2019s Medicare beneficiaries, have been hit hard by rising costs<\/a> in the last two years in part because seniors have a pent up demand for healthcare following the Covid-19 pandemic when many patients delayed treatment.<\/p>\n