UnitedHealth adjusts profit higher

MINNETONKA, MINN. – An increase in Medicare payments has caused UnitedHealth Group Inc., parent of United Healthcare of New England, to revise its second-quarter earnings upward less than a month after it had reported results for the period.
Profit increased to 89 cents per share, versus the previously reported 87 cents, despite an increase in medical costs in the quarter, according to Bloomberg News. The nation’s largest health insurance provider also revised its yearlong earnings projection to $3.45 to $3.50 per share, after expenses for stock options.
“I’m surprised and perplexed,” Sheryl Skolnick, an analyst with CRT Capital Group in Stamford, Conn., told Bloomberg News in a telephone interview. “This is not what I would have expected out of the newly transparent UnitedHealth. Clearly things are a little more confused and less transparent than we thought.”
U.S. officials are pursuing a criminal probe of backdated stock options that cost former CEO William McGuire his job last year. The company named a new CEO and a new chief financial officer and restated previous years’ earnings.
The second quarter revision took the company’s total profit to $1.23 billion from $1.2 billion. The Minnetonka, Minn., company had reported earnings of $981 million – or 70 cents per share – in the 2006 second quarter.

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