HCA Healthcare HCA
Healthcare · Medical - Care Facilities · Synthos Deep Dive · 2026-08-04
The Overview
HCA owns and runs hospitals — about 190 of them, mostly in the southern and western United States, with 320,000 employees. In many of the cities where it operates, it is not a hospital company, it is the hospital company, which is what gives it bargaining power with insurers.
The business itself is doing fine. Revenue in the most recent quarter rose 8.7%. More patients were admitted, more came to the emergency room.
The problem is who is paying. Americans who buy health insurance through the government-run "exchanges" have been losing that coverage, and when they turn up at a hospital uninsured, the hospital usually does not get paid. HCA told the market on 14 July — a week and a half before it formally reported — that this cost it about $400 million of profit in three months, and that it now expects the effect for the full year to be $1.0 to $1.2 billion, up from an earlier estimate of $600-900 million. It cut its profit forecast for the year.
There was an offsetting piece of good news in the same quarter, and it is important to understand why it is not as good as it looks. HCA also recorded about $400 million of extra payments from a Florida state Medicaid programme — but that payment covered a twenty-one month period, from October 2024 through June 2026. It arrived all at once. It will not arrive again at that size.
So the quarter looked roughly flat because one recurring bad thing and one one-off good thing happened to be the same size.
The shares have fallen 26.5% from their high. At $400.73 they cost about 12.4 times what analysts expect the company to earn in 2027, and the company generates about $6 billion of surplus cash a year — a 6.9% yield on the share price. It is spending most of that buying back its own shares: $10.1 billion in 2025 alone, or about one share in nine.
Our estimate of fair value is $425 — about 6% above the price. In a bad case the shares fall to about $310; in a good case they reach about $555. That is 1.7 dollars of possible gain per dollar of possible loss. Our bar is two to one, so the verdict is Watch, with a specific price written down at which it would become a Buy.
The reason we will not go further is that the central question is not about the company. It is whether Congress extends a set of health-insurance subsidies. HCA's own forecast says explicitly that it assumes they expire. Nobody, including the company, knows.
One data note. We check reported capital spending against the filed accounts because the vendor gets it wrong roughly four times in ten. Here it was exactly right — $4,944 million, matching to the dollar. But the same file reports HCA's total debt as $50.2 billion when the filing says $46.5 billion, and the reason is that the same $1.85 billion of lease obligations has been counted twice in two different places. We use the filing.
- Downside Risk 7/10. Negative equity, $49.7bn of debt, and an unresolved legislative exposure.
- Growth Quality 6/10. Good revenue growth; earnings growth is mostly the share count; guidance just came down.
- Exponential Potential 2/10. Hospitals. Density and cost of capital, not a curve.
Putting a number on it: our fair-value estimate is $425 against a current price of $417.82 — real upside if our numbers are right.
Our summary metrics
"Rated 7 — a leveraged, policy-exposed business whose equity has been engineered away by buybacks. The mechanics first, because they are extreme: stockholders' DEFICIT attributable to HCA Healthcare is MINUS $6,642 million at 30 June 2026, against $3,433 million of noncontrolling interests, for a total deficit of $3,209 million. Price-to-book of −13.58x, return on equity of −112.9%, debt-to-equity of −7.42x and financial leverage of −9.21x are therefore MEANINGLESS, not merely unflattering, and are rejected with the mechanism shown in Section 7 — this is the MAR defect class in a more extreme form. Total debt is $49,718 million at 30 June 2026 per the 10-Q, up $3,226 million in six months, at approximately 3.0x EBITDA, with the average life 11.7 years at 5.1%. On 29 July 2026 the company DOUBLED its commercial paper programme from a $4.0 billion to an $8.0 billion maximum. The policy exposure is the acute risk and it is quantified by the company: a $1.0-1.2 billion FY2026 pre-tax headwind from health-insurance-exchange coverage losses, with the guidance language naming 'the expiration of the enhanced premium tax credits' as a live assumption. The balance sheet is already showing it — accounts receivable rose $1,417 million in the first half, from $10,867 million to $12,281 million, a 13.0% increase against roughly 8% revenue growth, and first-half operating cash flow fell 25.8% to $4,349 million. Surgical volume is declining: same-facility inpatient surgeries −2.3% and outpatient surgeries −3.4% in the June quarter, which is the high-margin business."
"Rated 6 — top-line growth is solid, earnings growth is almost entirely the share count, and guidance has just been cut. Revenue: $58,752M (FY2021), $60,233M (FY2022), $64,968M (FY2023), $70,603M (FY2024), $75,600M (FY2025) — a 6.5% five-year compound rate, with FY2025 at +7.1%. The June 2026 quarter delivered $20,230M, up 8.7%, and same-facility admissions rose 2.5%, equivalent admissions 2.7% and emergency-room visits 3.6%. Below the revenue line the picture changes: net income attributable rose 2.8% to $1,699M while diluted EPS rose 11.6% to $7.62 — the eight-point gap is a share count that fell from 241.9 million to 222.8 million, 7.9%, in twelve months. Operating margin fell 79 basis points to 15.16%. On 14 July the company cut FY2026 diluted EPS guidance from $29.10-31.50 to $28.70-30.50 and adjusted EBITDA from $15.55-16.45 billion to $15.40-16.10 billion. Consensus now sits at $29.57 for FY2026 (14 analysts) — the middle of the revised range — $32.23 for FY2027 (15) and $35.45 for FY2028 (11). What holds this at 6: the FY2027 consensus implies 8.9% EPS growth in a year that faces a LARGER exchange headwind and does NOT repeat the approximately $400 million Florida Medicaid catch-up that made the June quarter look flat rather than down."
"Rated 2 — scale, density and capital access, none of which compound at an accelerating rate. HCA is the largest investor-owned acute-care operator in the United States, organised into three divisions the vendor payload mislabels as geographies — American Group ($26,445M of FY2025 revenue), Atlantic Group ($24,709M) and National Group ($21,278M) — with roughly 320,000 employees. The genuine competitive assets are local market density (in Nashville, Houston, Denver, Dallas and much of Florida and Texas, HCA IS the acute-care network, which determines commercial payer negotiating leverage) and a cost of capital no non-profit system can match, evidenced by $44.2 billion of senior unsecured notes at an average 5.1% with an 11.7-year average life. That produces a 19.4% return on invested capital and $5,997 million of trailing free cash flow. What it does not produce is optionality. Capital expenditure guidance of $5.0-5.5 billion for 2026 is roughly 7% of revenue and buys beds, operating rooms and ambulatory sites — linear capacity. The chief executive's own framing in the July release is 'execute on our strategic plan to digitize and grow our healthcare networks', which is half-weighted as management language and, taken at face value, describes efficiency rather than a new curve. A 2, not a 1, because the free-cash-flow conversion and the buyback create genuine per-share convexity: at $10,067 million of FY2025 repurchase against an $86.8 billion market capitalisation, the share count is the fastest-moving variable in the model."
What does “fair value” mean?
Fair value is Synthos’s estimate of what one share is worth today, based on our model of the company’s future cash generation and the risks to it. It is not a price target or a prediction of where the stock trades next quarter — it’s the price where we think risk and reward are balanced. Above it, you’re paying for outcomes better than our base case; below it, the market is offering a margin of safety.
The model’s inputs and weightings are proprietary — they’re the product. What we publish is the output, plus an independent, public-math cross-check further down the page (“Check our number”) so you can judge it for yourself.
What do the 5 tiers mean? (Core · Tactical · Watch · Hold · Avoid)
The Road Ahead
What we expect to matter in each window, and the evidence that would prove us wrong.
Short term 0-6 months
Neutral- Driver
- "HCA closed 2026-08-04 at $400.73, down 1.45%, and the technical picture is a deep drawdown beginning to stabilise. The shares are 26.5% below the 52-week high of $545.13 — the largest drawdown in this batch by a wide margin — and only 10.9% above the low of $361.32. They sit 3.5% ABOVE a 50-day moving average of $387.42 and 12.3% BELOW a 200-day of $457.13, with RSI at 59.9 and MACD positive at +2.78. Six-month return is −19.3% against SPY's +11.1%, a thirty-point deficit; three-month is −6.2% against +7.6%; twelve-month is +12.3% against +24.3%. The proximate cause is documented: the 2026-07-14 pre-announcement cut FY2026 EPS guidance and doubled the estimated health-insurance-exchange headwind to $1.0-1.2 billion. The stance is neutral rather than tailwind because the policy question is unresolved — the guidance language names 'the expiration of the enhanced premium tax credits' as an assumption, not a settled fact — and neutral rather than headwind because at 12.4x FY2027 consensus with a 6.9% free-cash-flow yield and a buyback running above 10% of the market capitalisation annually, a great deal of bad news is in the price."
- What we’re watching
- "The 2026-10-23 print against consensus adjusted EPS of $6.78 and revenue of $19,397M — and note that the EPS consensus is BELOW the September 2025 actual of $6.96, so the street is modelling a year-on-year DECLINE. Within it, four numbers: the health-insurance-exchange payer-mix impact, which the company quantified at approximately $400 million in the June quarter and $1.0-1.2 billion for the full year; whether any further Medicaid Supplemental Payment Program benefit is recognised, after approximately $400 million in the June quarter that covered October 2024 through June 2026 and will not repeat at that scale; same-facility surgical volumes, which fell 2.3% inpatient and 3.4% outpatient and are the highest-margin service line; and accounts receivable, which rose $1,417 million in the first half to $12,281 million — the balance-sheet signature of an uninsured mix shift. Also watch the buyback pace after $3,635 million in the first half, and the newly doubled $8.0 billion commercial paper capacity."
- Confidence
- Medium
Medium term 6-24 months
Neutral- Driver
- "The medium term is a policy question with a good business behind it, and the two do not resolve on the same timetable. The business is performing: June-quarter revenue up 8.7%, same-facility admissions up 2.5%, equivalent admissions up 2.7%, emergency-room visits up 3.6%, and management citing 'improved expense trends'. Trailing free cash flow of $5,997 million on an $86.8 billion market capitalisation is a 6.9% yield, recomputed from filed figures rather than taken from the vendor. Capital return is extraordinary: $10,067 million of stock repurchased in FY2025 alone — 11.6% of today's market capitalisation — plus $3,635 million in the first half of 2026, taking the share count from 249.981 million at December 2024 to 217.963 million at June 2026, a 12.8% reduction in eighteen months. At 12.4x FY2027 consensus that buyback is worth more than the dividend by an order of magnitude. Against it: the exchange headwind is $1.0-1.2 billion of pre-tax income in FY2026 and the enhanced premium tax credits' expiration is named in the company's own guidance assumptions. The June quarter was made to look flat by an approximately $400 million Florida Medicaid catch-up covering twenty-one months. Consensus FY2027 EPS of $32.23 implies 8.9% growth against that setup, and we think that is the number most likely to be wrong."
- What we’re watching
- "Whether the enhanced premium tax credits expire, are extended, or are replaced — this single legislative question is worth more to HCA's earnings than anything management can do. Whether exchange enrolment stabilises: the company's FY2026 estimate has already moved from ($600)-($900) million to ($1.000)-($1.200) billion in three months, and the direction of revision is the information. Whether the Medicaid Supplemental Payment Program benefit persists beyond the Florida catch-up — the FY2026 assumption swung from ($50)-($250) million to +$300 to +$500 million, and a swing of that size in a single revision indicates a line with very low visibility. Whether surgical volumes recover from −2.3% inpatient and −3.4% outpatient. Whether operating cash flow recovers from a 25.8% first-half decline and whether accounts receivable stop rising faster than revenue. Whether leverage holds near 3.0x with the commercial paper programme now doubled to $8.0 billion and $3,635 million of stock repurchased in six months. And whether the FY2027 consensus of $32.23 is cut."
- Confidence
- Low
Long term 2+ years
Tailwind- Driver
- "Over a decade the structural position is strong and it rests on two things that do not change with an election. The first is local density: in a large number of American metropolitan markets — Nashville, Houston, Dallas, Denver, and much of Florida and Texas — HCA is not a hospital operator but the hospital network, and commercial payer rates are negotiated against that reality. Scale of that kind cannot be assembled quickly, because building a hospital requires certificates of need, capital and a decade. The second is cost of capital: $44.2 billion of senior unsecured notes at an average effective rate of 5.1% with an average life of 11.7 years, against non-profit systems that fund from operations and philanthropy. That combination produces a 19.4% return on invested capital and roughly $6 billion of annual free cash flow from a business with 6-7% revenue growth. Demographics do the rest: the population most intensive in acute-care use is the fastest-growing cohort in the country, and HCA's markets are the fastest-growing states. What the long-run case does not include is any escape from the payer. Roughly 96% of revenue comes from government programmes or insurers, and the mix between them is set in Washington and in fifty state capitals."
- What we’re watching
- "Whether the payer mix stabilises structurally. `seg_prod` — which for HCA is a payer table rather than a product table — shows Managed Care and Other Insurers at $36,968 million of FY2025 revenue, Managed Medicare at $13,435 million growing 12.1% year on year, Medicare at $11,273 million, Medicaid at $5,909 million and Managed Medicaid at $3,693 million. Managed Medicare is the fastest-growing line and pays less than commercial. Whether the exchange population, once lost, returns. Whether HCA continues to convert roughly 8% of revenue into free cash flow while spending $5.0-5.5 billion a year on capital. Whether the equity deficit, currently minus $6,642 million and widening by roughly $600 million a quarter, ever constrains the company — it has not yet, and it removes any cushion for a large impairment or legal settlement. Whether the buyback can continue at 10%-plus of market capitalisation annually while debt rises. And chief-executive succession: Samuel N. Hazen has led the company since 2019, and the Frist family remains represented on the board with two directors filing as 10% owners."
- Confidence
- Medium
Exponential Potential
"Rated 2 — scale, density and capital access, none of which compound at an accelerating rate. HCA is the largest investor-owned acute-care operator in the United States, organised into three divisions the vendor payload mislabels as geographies — American Group ($26,445M of FY2025 revenue), Atlantic Group ($24,709M) and National Group ($21,278M) — with roughly 320,000 employees. The genuine competitive assets are local market density (in Nashville, Houston, Denver, Dallas and much of Florida and Texas, HCA IS the acute-care network, which determines commercial payer negotiating leverage) and a cost of capital no non-profit system can match, evidenced by $44.2 billion of senior unsecured notes at an average 5.1% with an 11.7-year average life. That produces a 19.4% return on invested capital and $5,997 million of trailing free cash flow. What it does not produce is optionality. Capital expenditure guidance of $5.0-5.5 billion for 2026 is roughly 7% of revenue and buys beds, operating rooms and ambulatory sites — linear capacity. The chief executive's own framing in the July release is 'execute on our strategic plan to digitize and grow our healthcare networks', which is half-weighted as management language and, taken at face value, describes efficiency rather than a new curve. A 2, not a 1, because the free-cash-flow conversion and the buyback create genuine per-share convexity: at $10,067 million of FY2025 repurchase against an $86.8 billion market capitalisation, the share count is the fastest-moving variable in the model."
What could take this further than the base case — and where the market may be underpricing it. Full forward-growth and acceleration math in Deeper analysis, §4 below.
Deeper analysis
Technicals, fundamentals, valuation, and the full expert-claim evidence panel — the detail behind the numbers above.
Reference table
| Street consensus | $455.19 (+13.6%) · median $442.5 · high $579 · low $369 · 0 strong buy / 29 buy / 15 hold / 2 sell across 46 analysts |
| Valuation | 13.55x FY2026E · 12.43x FY2027E · 11.30x FY2028E · 13.42x trailing GAAP diluted · 8.5x EV/EBITDA on a vendor EV this dive corrects · price-to-book is MEANINGLESS, see Section 7 |
| The event — filing-verified | 2026-07-14 pre-announcement: "a payer mix shift driven by an increase in uninsured volume, primarily due to patients who lost coverage on the health insurance exchanges", costing approximately $400 million of pre-tax income in the June quarter · FY2026 exchange assumption widened from ($600)-($900)M to ($1.000)-($1.200) BILLION · FY2026 diluted EPS guidance cut from $29.10-31.50 to $28.70-30.50 |
| The offset that will not repeat | Approximately $400 million of incremental Medicaid Supplemental Payment Program benefit in the June quarter, "primarily related to the state of Florida for the time period October 1, 2024 through June 30, 2026" · FY2026 assumption swung from ($50)-($250)M to +$300 to +$500M |
| Cash generation — recomputed and verified | Trailing operating cash flow $11,124M · trailing capex $5,127M · trailing free cash flow $5,997M, a 6.91% yield · FY2025 capex $4,944M, matching the 10-K to the dollar · H1 2026 operating cash flow fell 25.8% to $4,349M |
| Leverage — where the filing wins, twice over | Total debt $49,718M at 2026-06-30 per the 10-Q ($46,492M at 2025-12-31) · vendor totalDebt reads $50,198M against the filing's $46,492M, 8.0% higher — and $1,853M of it is the SAME operating lease counted TWICE · stockholders' deficit attributable to HCA MINUS $6,642M |
| Capital return | $10,067M repurchased in FY2025 — 11.6% of today's market capitalisation in one year — plus $3,635M in H1 2026 · share count 249.981M (Dec 2024) → 217.963M (Jun 2026), −12.8% in eighteen months · dividend $0.72/quarter, 0.72% yield |
| Conviction | ZERO entity matches in 52,021. 41 free-text hits on "hospital", all clinical or unrelated, including three eli_lilly_ceo claims about Gilead, Merck and Ridgeback — the documented contamination class. All discarded |
| Technicals | −26.47% from the 52-week high of $545.13 — the largest drawdown in this batch; +10.93% above the low of $361.32; +3.5% above the 50-DMA ($387.42) but 12.3% BELOW the 200-DMA ($457.13); RSI 59.9; MACD +2.78; 6-month −19.33% vs SPY +11.09% |
What the experts actually said
No independent expert claims in the Synthos knowledge base yet for HCA — this dive is fundamentals- and technicals-driven, not panel-driven.
Price & moving averages 12 months · 50 & 200-day averages · 52-week range
Solid line = price · dashed line = 50-day average · dotted line = 200-day average · the two thin horizontal lines mark the 52-week high and low. Price above both averages is an uptrend.
Data summary: last close $417.82, 4% above the 50-day average ($400), 8% below the 200-day average ($454) — a mixed trend. 23% below the 52-week high of $545, 16% above the 52-week low of $361.
Bollinger Bands 20-day average ± 2 standard deviations
The shaded band widens when the stock gets more volatile. Riding the upper edge = strong momentum (sometimes stretched); the lower edge = weak / potentially oversold.
Data summary: price $417.82 is currently inside the band (band $397–$431).
RSI (14) momentum gauge · 0–100
Above 70 (overbought zone, shaded) = overbought, below 30 (oversold zone, shaded) = oversold. Currently 55.
MACD 12 / 26 / 9 · trend & momentum
The MACD line crossing above the signal line (bars flip to the up color) = momentum turning up; crossing below (bars flip to the down color) = turning down. Bar height = the size of that gap.
Data summary: MACD is currently above its signal line by 0.40, positive momentum.
Relative performance vs S&P 500 & its sector (XLV (sector)), set to 100 a year ago
Solid = HCA · dashed = S&P 500 · dotted = XLV (sector). A rising line means it is beating that benchmark — the sector line shows whether it is a leader or laggard within its own group.
Forward revenue & earnings actual → estimate · "FY" = fiscal year, "E" = estimate
Darker bars = actual results, brighter = analyst estimates. Taller bars to the right = expected growth.
Key stats an RIA wants
1. The July disclosures — the event that explains the drawdown
HCA did something unusual on 14 July 2026: it pre-announced its second quarter ten days early and revised guidance in the same document. A company does that when it believes the market's estimates need correcting before the print. The vendor payload contains no trace of either the pre-announcement or the guidance revision.
The commentary, verbatim from the 8-K filed 2026-07-14:
> "During the second quarter, the Company experienced a payer mix shift driven by an increase in uninsured volume, primarily due to patients who lost coverage on the health insurance exchanges. The Company estimates this payer mix shift had an unfavorable impact on income before income taxes of approximately $400 million during the second quarter. This amount includes an increase of approximately $75 million related to the Company's previous estimate of the first quarter health insurance exchange impact. In addition, to a lesser degree the Company experienced a service mix shift primarily related to a decline in surgical volume."
> "The Company also experienced positive factors including growth in admissions, equivalent admissions and ER visits, increased benefit from Medicaid Supplemental Payment Programs and improved expense trends. During the second quarter, the Company recognized approximately $400 million of incremental net benefit from Medicaid Supplemental Payment Programs, primarily related to the state of Florida for the time period October 1, 2024 through June 30, 2026, to reflect the impact of the state directed payment program approved during the quarter by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services."
Read those two paragraphs together and the quarter decodes. A recurring, worsening headwind of approximately $400 million was offset by a one-off, twenty-one-month catch-up of approximately $400 million. Net income attributable rose 2.8%. Neither the flatness nor the offset is a run rate.
The guidance revision
| Previous (2026-01-27) | Revised (2026-07-14) | Midpoint change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenues | $76.500 – $80.000bn | $77.000 – $79.500bn | unchanged at $78.25bn |
| Net income attributable | $6.495 – $7.035bn | $6.300 – $6.700bn | $6.765bn → $6.500bn, −3.9% |
| Adjusted EBITDA | $15.550 – $16.450bn | $15.400 – $16.100bn | $16.00bn → $15.75bn, −1.6% |
| EPS (diluted) | $29.10 – $31.50 | $28.70 – $30.50 | $30.30 → $29.60, −2.3% |
And the two key assumptions, revised against an April baseline:
| Previous (2026-04-24) | Revised (2026-07-14) | change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Health Insurance Exchanges | ($600) to ($900) million | ($1.000) to ($1.200) billion | worse by $400M at BOTH ends |
| Medicaid Supplemental Payment Programs | ($50) to ($250) million | +$300 to +$500 million | better by $350M to $750M |
Three things follow, and they are the analytical core of this dive.
First, revenue guidance did not change — the midpoint is identical at $78.25 billion. The entire revision is margin. Patients are still coming; a growing share of them cannot pay.
Second, the exchange estimate moved $400 million worse at both ends of the range in three months. The direction and speed of revision is more informative than the level. A company that revised from ($600)-($900)M to ($1.0)-($1.2)bn in one quarter may revise again.
Third, the Medicaid line swung by $350-750 million in the favourable direction and is disclosed as a catch-up. The FY2026 guidance therefore contains a benefit that does not extend into FY2027 at anything like this scale, which is the specific reason we think the FY2027 consensus of $32.23 is the number most at risk.
The company's own forward-looking language names the risk explicitly, and this is the sentence that matters most in the entire filing archive: guidance depends on "the impact of current and future health care public policy developments, including the estimated impact on health insurance exchanges from administrative reforms and the expiration of the enhanced premium tax credits."
The other two corporate actions absent from the payload
A $3.0 billion notes offering. From the 10-Q: "During April 2026, we issued $3.000 billion aggregate principal amount of senior notes comprised of (i) $1.000 billion aggregate principal amount of 4.700% senior notes due 2031, (ii) $750 million aggregate principal amount of 5.000% senior notes due 2033 and (iii) $1.250 billion aggregate principal amount of 5.300% senior notes due 2036. We used the net proceeds to repay borrowings under the commercial paper program and for general corporate purposes." And: "During May 2026, we redeemed all $1.500 billion aggregate principal amount of 5.250% senior notes due 2026 and all $1.000 billion aggregate principal amount of 5.375% senior notes due 2026."
The commercial paper programme was DOUBLED. From the 8-K filed 2026-07-29: "HCA Inc.... increased the size of its commercial paper program... from a maximum aggregate face or principal amount of $4.0 billion outstanding at any time to a maximum aggregate face or principal amount of $8.0 billion outstanding at any time." Commercial paper outstanding was $3,890 million at 30 June 2026 against $2,207 million at 31 December — already 97% of the old ceiling. Doubling short-term borrowing capacity five days after cutting guidance is a fact worth stating plainly; it is prudent liquidity management and it is also the funding source for a buyback running above $7 billion a year.
2. The quarter and the trajectory
All figures from the 8-K earnings release filed 2026-07-24 and the 10-Q filed 2026-07-28 ($M):
| Q2 2026 | Q2 2025 | change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenues | $20,230 | $18,605 | +8.7% |
| Operating income | $3,067 | $2,967 | +3.4% |
| Operating margin | 15.16% | 15.95% | −79 bps |
| Depreciation and amortisation | $944 | $863 | +9.4% |
| Interest expense | $599 | $568 | +5.5% |
| Income before income taxes | $2,494 | $2,415 | +3.3% |
| Net income attributable to HCA | $1,699 | $1,653 | +2.8% |
| Diluted EPS | $7.62 | $6.83 | +11.6% |
| Diluted EPS, as adjusted | $7.59 | — | +11.0% |
| Adjusted EBITDA | $4,027 | — | +4.6% |
| Diluted shares | 222.8M | 241.9M | −7.9% |
| Operating cash flow | $2,335 | $4,210 | −44.5% |
Same-facility operating statistics, from the release:
| Q2 2026 vs Q2 2025 | |
|---|---|
| Admissions | +2.5% |
| Equivalent admissions | +2.7% |
| Emergency room visits | +3.6% |
| Inpatient surgeries | −2.3% |
| Outpatient surgeries | −3.4% |
Four observations.
First, the gap between net income growth (+2.8%) and EPS growth (+11.6%) is the entire buyback. A 7.9% smaller share count did roughly nine points of the eleven.
Second, surgeries are falling while admissions rise. Emergency-room visits +3.6% and admissions +2.5% against inpatient surgeries −2.3% and outpatient surgeries −3.4%. That is exactly the mix an uninsured shift produces: emergency presentations are not elective and cannot be deferred; surgery is. The release calls it "a service mix shift primarily related to a decline in surgical volume" and notes it as a negative "to a lesser degree" than the payer shift. It is the same phenomenon seen from the other side.
Third, operating cash flow fell 44.5% in the quarter and 25.8% in the half — from $5,861M to $4,349M — and the 10-Q identifies the cause: accounts receivable consumed $1,417 million of cash in the first half against a $320 million release a year earlier. The balance sheet shows receivables rising from $10,867M to $12,281M, up 13.0%, against roughly 8% revenue growth. When an insured patient becomes an uninsured patient, the receivable is booked and the cash is not collected. This is the payer-mix shift showing up in working capital, and it is the most concrete corroboration of the narrative available.
Fourth, the reported "beat" was 0.4%. Adjusted EPS of $7.59 against a $7.56 estimate — and the estimate had been reset ten days earlier by the company's own pre-announcement.
The annual series
| FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $58,752M | $60,233M | $64,968M | $70,603M | $75,600M |
| Growth | — | +2.5% | +7.9% | +8.7% | +7.1% |
| Operating income | $9,678M | $9,053M | $9,627M | $10,547M | $11,965M |
| Net income attributable | $6,956M | $5,643M | $5,242M | $5,760M | $6,784M |
| Diluted EPS | $21.16 | $19.15 | $18.96 | $22.00 | $28.38 |
| Diluted shares | 328.8M | 294.7M | 276.4M | 261.8M | 230.7M |
| Share repurchase | — | $7,000M | $3,811M | $6,042M | $10,067M |
Diluted EPS rose 50% between FY2021 and FY2025 while net income fell 2.5%. The share count fell 29.8%. That is the model, stated without euphemism: HCA grows revenue at 6-8%, converts it to roughly $6 billion of free cash flow, and retires stock with essentially all of it.
The four-quarter surprise record, and it is decaying fast:
| Quarter | Adjusted EPS actual | Estimate | Surprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q2 2025 | $6.84 | $6.29 | +8.7% |
| Q3 2025 | $6.96 | $5.79 | +20.2% |
| Q4 2025 | $8.01 | $7.46 | +7.4% |
| Q1 2026 | $7.15 | $7.12 | +0.4% |
| Q2 2026 | $7.59 | $7.56 | +0.4% |
From +20.2% to +0.4% in three quarters. Consensus has caught up, and the last two quarters were essentially in line with a bar the company itself had lowered.
3. Cash flow, capital and the balance sheet
The capital-expenditure check: VERIFIED CLEAN
The 10-K's consolidated statement of cash flows states purchase of property and equipment of $4,944 million (FY2025), $4,875 million (FY2024) and $4,744 million (FY2023). The vendor reads −$4,944M, −$4,875M and −$4,744M. Identical to the dollar in all three years. Operating cash flow of $12,636M / $10,514M / $9,431M also matches exactly.
The trailing recomputation, built from filed figures:
| Source | |
|---|---|
| FY2025 operating cash flow | $12,636M (10-K) |
| less H1 2025 | ($5,861M) (10-Q) |
| plus H1 2026 | $4,349M (10-Q) |
| = TTM operating cash flow | $11,124M |
| FY2025 capex $4,944M − H1 2025 $2,167M + H1 2026 $2,350M | ($5,127M) |
| = TTM free cash flow | $5,997M |
| FCF yield on $86.759B market cap | 6.91% |
Our TTM capex ÷ TTM operating cash flow is 5,127 ÷ 11,124 = 0.4609. The vendor's capexToOperatingCashFlowTTM is 0.4608954. Our FCF yield of 6.912% reproduces the vendor's freeCashFlowYieldTTM of 6.9123%. capexToDepreciationTTM of 1.395 is plausible for a hospital operator replacing and expanding physical plant and is corroborated by the datum rather than in tension with it. Both the diagnostic and the datum were tested separately against the filing, per the MPC lesson; both pass. No repair applied. This is the fourth clean capex verification in this batch.
Forward capital intensity is flat and management confirmed it in the guidance revision: "The Company's 2026 estimate for capital expenditures of $5.0 billion to $5.5 billion, excluding acquisitions, remains unchanged." That the capex plan did NOT change alongside the earnings cut is a small but real signal of confidence in demand.
Capital return, and the equity it has consumed
| FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | H1 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Share repurchase | $7,000M | $3,811M | $6,042M | $10,067M | $3,635M |
| Dividends paid | $653M | $661M | $690M | $679M | $354M |
| as % of current market cap | 8.1% | 4.4% | 7.0% | 11.6% | 4.2% (6 months) |
HCA repurchased $10,067 million of stock in FY2025 — 11.6% of today's entire market capitalisation, in one year. Combined with dividends that is $10,746 million, 12.4%. The first half of 2026 added $3,635 million and $354 million.
From the 10-Q's statement of stockholders' equity, the share count is the cleanest possible statement of what this does: 249.981 million at 31 December 2024, 242.955 million at 31 March 2025, 236.144 million at 30 June 2025, 217.963 million at 30 June 2026. A 12.8% reduction in eighteen months.
And it is why the equity is negative. Retained deficit of minus $6,310 million at 30 June 2026, stockholders' deficit attributable to HCA of minus $6,642 million, against noncontrolling interests of $3,433 million for a total deficit of minus $3,209 million. This is not distress; it is arithmetic. A company that buys back more stock than it earns, for a decade, retires equity into a deficit. The consequence for the ratio block is severe and is handled in Section 7.
Debt
| 2026-06-30 | 2025-12-31 | |
|---|---|---|
| Commercial paper (avg life 38 days, 4.3%) | $3,890M | $2,207M |
| Other debt (4.9%) | $1,069M | $1,021M |
| Senior unsecured credit facility (4.8%) | $1,010M | — |
| Senior unsecured notes payable through 2095 (5.1%) | $44,200M | $43,700M |
| Debt issuance costs and discounts | ($451M) | ($436M) |
| Total debt | $49,718M | $46,492M |
| less amounts due within one year | $6,264M | $4,889M |
Total debt rose $3,226 million in six months while the company repurchased $3,635 million of stock. Average life of long-term debt is 11.7 years at an average 5.1%, and there are notes outstanding to 2095 — a genuinely long-dated, fixed-rate liability structure that is a real advantage against non-profit competitors. Net debt to EBITDA is approximately 3.0x.
4. Payer mix and the divisions — what the segment blocks actually contain
seg_prod is not a product table; it is a PAYER table, and for HCA that is more useful. FY2025 revenue by payer ($M):
| Payer | FY2025 | share | FY2024 | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Managed Care and Other Insurers | $36,968 | 48.9% | $34,954 | +5.8% |
| Managed Medicare | $13,435 | 17.8% | $11,987 | +12.1% |
| Medicare | $11,273 | 14.9% | $10,780 | +4.6% |
| Medicaid | $5,909 | 7.8% | $4,678 | +26.3% |
| Managed Medicaid | $3,693 | 4.9% | $3,980 | −7.2% |
| International | $1,864 | 2.5% | $1,682 | +10.8% |
| Total in block | $73,142 | 96.7% | $68,061 | +7.5% |
inc_a revenue | $75,600 | 100% | $70,603 | +7.1% |
| Unaccounted (self-pay / other) | $2,458 | 3.3% | $2,542 | — |
The block sums to 96.7% of revenue. The $2,458 million residual is the self-pay and other category the vendor does not carry — and it is precisely the line that is growing because of the exchange coverage losses. The block is used for what it is good for (payer mix and its direction) and the missing line is stated rather than smoothed.
Two readings. Roughly 96% of revenue comes from government programmes or insurers, so the mix between them is a policy variable, not a commercial one. And Managed Medicare grew 12.1% while commercial Managed Care grew 5.8% — the fastest-growing payer pays less than the largest one, which is a slow structural margin drag independent of the exchange issue.
seg_geo is not a geography block; it contains HCA's operating DIVISIONS. FY2025: American Group $26,445M, Atlantic Group $24,709M, National Group $21,278M — summing to $72,432M, 95.8% of revenue, with the $3,168M residual being the "Corporate and Other" line that the block carried in FY2023 and earlier and dropped from FY2024 onward.
This is a category error of the same class as Williams' seg_geo entry reading "West", though milder in consequence — HCA's operations are overwhelmingly domestic (the payer table shows International at $1,864 million, 2.5% of revenue, being the United Kingdom and Switzerland), so a correct geography block would be a single United States line plus a small international one. The home market is absent because the dimension is wrong, not because a line was dropped. The block is not used as geography; the divisional figures are used and labelled as divisions.
5. Valuation — priced in or room?
At $400.73 (market cap $86.759B, 217.96M shares):
| Trailing | FY2026E | FY2027E | FY2028E | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Consensus adjusted EPS | — | $29.573 (14) | $32.232 (15) | $35.450 (11) |
| Company guidance (2026-07-14) | — | $28.70 – $30.50 | — | — |
| Growth | — | +4.2% (on FY2025's $28.38 GAAP) | +9.0% | +10.0% |
| P/E | 13.42x (GAAP diluted) | 13.55x | 12.43x | 11.30x |
| Revenue (consensus) | $75,600M (FY2025) | $78,501M (18) | $81,580M (18) | $85,481M (16) |
| Company revenue guidance | — | $77.0 – $79.5bn | — | — |
| Free cash flow yield (recomputed) | 6.91% | — | — | — |
| Buyback yield (FY2025) | 11.6% | — | — | — |
| Dividend yield | 0.72% | — | — | — |
| EV / EBITDA | 8.50x (vendor; approximately 8.8x corrected) | — | — | — |
| Return on invested capital | 19.4% | — | — | — |
| Net debt / EBITDA | ~3.0x | — | — | — |
| Price / book | MEANINGLESS — negative equity | — | — | — |
Estimate coverage is good. 14 analysts on FY2026 EPS, 15 on FY2027 — the anchor — and 11 on FY2028. FY2029 and FY2030 rest on 4 analysts each and are excluded from every conclusion. The FY2027 range of $30.815 to $33.678 is a 9.3% spread.
Consensus FY2026 EPS of $29.573 sits almost exactly at the midpoint of the company's revised $28.70-$30.50 guidance — so the near year is fully marked to the July cut. FY2027's $32.232 is not, and that is where the disagreement lives.
est.ebitdaAvg and est.ebitAvg are REJECTED with the signature stated. In every year from FY2023 to FY2030, ebitdaAvg is exactly 21.245% of revenueAvg and ebitAvg is exactly 16.470%. HCA's actual FY2025 EBITDA margin on the vendor's own income statement was 20.64%, and the company's own FY2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance of $15.4-16.1 billion on $77.0-79.5 billion of revenue is 19.6-20.3%. The fabricated 21.245% sits above both and is applied mechanically across eight years. All forward valuation uses epsAvg, which is sound: FY2025's $27.683 against a reported GAAP diluted $28.38 is a 2.5% difference on an adjusted basis.
Enterprise value is understated and the correction matters here. enterpriseValueTTM of $134,522M implies $47,763M of net claims. Rebuilding from the 10-Q: total debt of $49,718M less cash of $1,013M plus noncontrolling interests of $3,433M gives $52,138M — $4,375 million, 9.2%, higher. The NCI omission is the KKR / MPC / FCX class again, and at $3,433 million it is 2.5% of the corrected enterprise value — small in relative terms and large in absolute ones for a company whose noncontrolling interests earned $231 million in a single quarter. Corrected EV/EBITDA on trailing adjusted EBITDA of roughly $15.8 billion is approximately 8.8x rather than the vendor's 8.5x.
5a. What today's price assumes (the inversion)
At $400.73 — 13.55x FY2026 consensus and 12.43x FY2027 — the price embeds:
- FY2026 diluted EPS lands near $29.57, the midpoint of the company's revised $28.70-$30.50 range. (Consensus and company guidance, which now agree.) The first half delivered $14.77 ($7.15 plus $7.62), so the second half needs $14.80. The September quarter consensus of $6.78 is BELOW the September 2025 actual of $6.96 — the street already models a year-on-year decline, which is honest of it.
- FY2027 EPS grows 9.0% to $32.23. (Consensus; 15 analysts.) This is the most fragile assumption in the price, and the reason is specific rather than general: FY2026 contains +$300 to +$500 million of Medicaid Supplemental Payment Program benefit, of which approximately $400 million was a twenty-one-month Florida catch-up recognised in one quarter, while the exchange headwind of $1.0-1.2 billion recurs and the company's own guidance assumes "the expiration of the enhanced premium tax credits". A FY2027 in which the Medicaid catch-up does not repeat and the exchange drag holds or widens produces EPS nearer $29-30 than $32.23, and at 12.4x that is $360-372 — 7-10% below spot with nothing else going wrong.
- The buyback continues near $7-10 billion a year. (Our number, from $10,067M in FY2025 and $3,635M in H1 2026.) At roughly 8-11% of market capitalisation annually it contributes most of the consensus EPS growth. It is funded from $6.0 billion of free cash flow plus incremental debt, and on 29 July the commercial paper ceiling was doubled to $8.0 billion. If leverage or a rating action stops it, the EPS growth stops with it.
- The exchange headwind does not exceed $1.2 billion. (Company guidance.) It has already been revised from $600-900 million in April to $1.0-1.2 billion in July. The revision rate, not the level, is the risk.
- The market keeps paying 11-14x forward earnings. (Our number.) At 10x FY2027E the stock is $322; at 15x it is $483. Every point of multiple is $32.23 per share, 8.0% of the price — the highest multiple sensitivity in this batch, because the multiple is the lowest.
5b. The return bridge (why the multiple moves)
Expected return over the next twelve months decomposes as: EPS growth (+9.0%, FY2026E $29.573 to FY2027E $32.232, of which most is the share count) + multiple drift (roughly HELD, from 13.55x on today's forward year to about 13.2x on the then-forward year) + shareholder yield (dividend 0.72%; the buyback is already inside the EPS growth and is NOT double-counted) ≈ +9%.
Our base assumes the multiple holds and the earnings come in slightly below consensus, which is why $425 is only 6.1% above spot rather than the 13.6% the street's target implies.
Note the unusual structure of this return, and it is the strongest argument for the name. Almost all of the EPS growth is the buyback, and the buyback is funded by free cash flow that is 6.9% of the market capitalisation. That means the return does not require revenue acceleration, margin expansion or a re-rating — it requires only that the free cash flow keeps arriving and the share count keeps falling. It is the same structural argument that made Capital One a Buy in this programme. What stops it clearing the bar here is that the free cash flow itself is the thing under legislative threat: a $1.2 billion pre-tax headwind is roughly $950 million after tax, 16% of trailing free cash flow, and the company has already revised it once.
At 10x FY2027E the price is $322 (−19.6%). At 15x it is $483 (+20.6%).
5c. Variant perception (where we differ, what would surprise)
- We think the FY2027 consensus is too high, and the reason is a specific disclosure rather than a general worry. The June quarter's approximately $400 million Medicaid Supplemental Payment Program benefit covered October 2024 through June 2026 — twenty-one months recognised at once. FY2026 guidance carries +$300 to +$500 million from this line; FY2027 has no comparable catch-up available. Simultaneously the exchange headwind is guided at $1.0-1.2 billion and the company's assumptions name the enhanced premium tax credits' expiration. Consensus FY2027 growth of 9.0% requires both the catch-up to be replaced and the exchange drag not to widen. Watchable number: the FY2027 guidance issued with the January 2027 fourth-quarter release.
- We differ from the street on the level by 6.6% — our $425 against a consensus of $455.19 and a median of $442.5 — and we are inside the range rather than at the sceptical tail. Two of 46 analysts have sell ratings. We are not calling this a value trap; we are marking the FY2027 number down and applying the same multiple.
- We think the receivables line is the best real-time indicator available and almost nobody quotes it. Accounts receivable rose $1,417 million in the first half, from $10,867M to $12,281M — 13.0% against roughly 8% revenue growth — and consumed cash that turned a 44.5% quarterly operating-cash-flow decline. That is the payer-mix shift measured in dollars rather than described in commentary. Watchable number: days sales outstanding and the receivables balance in the 2026-10-23 release. If receivables stop outgrowing revenue, the mix shift has stabilised regardless of what the commentary says.
- The knowledge base has NOTHING on this name and the free-text lane is worthless. Zero entity matches in 52,021. Forty-one hits on "hospital" and not one is about a hospital operator as a business: influenza antivirals, a study on hospital room tree views, HIPAA and hospital lawyers, hospital-controlled data access as a constraint on medical AI, Compass Group's catering, and a run of COVID therapeutics. Three of the latter sit under
eli_lilly_ceoand concern Gilead, Merck and Ridgeback — a direct instance of the documented contamination in which that channel carries other companies' claims, and they are excluded on content mismatch. The one structurally relevant claim is mildly negative and eleven years old:biotech_hangout, 2015-03-24, conviction 65 — "Healthcare is structurally shifting away from hospitals/institutions toward home-based care." - Positive surprise that would force a re-rating: legislative extension or replacement of the enhanced premium tax credits, which would remove a $1.0-1.2 billion pre-tax drag at a stroke and is worth roughly $4 of annual EPS; or a September quarter in which the exchange impact comes in below the guided run-rate and receivables stop outgrowing revenue; or additional state directed-payment approvals of Florida scale in other states.
- Negative surprise that would break the thesis: a third upward revision to the exchange headwind, above $1.2 billion; FY2027 guidance below $30; a buyback slowdown while debt keeps rising; surgical volumes declining more than 4%; or a rating action that constrains the newly doubled $8.0 billion commercial paper programme.
Synthos fair values
All three anchors are multiples of the FY2027 consensus adjusted EPS distribution (mean $32.232, low $30.815, high $33.678; 15 analysts), cross-checked against the recomputed free-cash-flow yield. Price-to-book is not available as a cross-check because equity is negative; that is stated rather than substituted.
- Bear ~$310 — 10.1x the FY2027 consensus LOW of $30.815. Cross-check: 10.5x FY2026E; a 9.3% free-cash-flow yield; 14.2% below the 52-week low of $361.32. The scenario: the exchange headwind widens beyond $1.2 billion, the Medicaid catch-up is not replaced, FY2027 EPS lands near $29, the buyback slows to defend leverage, and a business with negative equity and 3.0x debt re-rates to a trough multiple. −22.6%.
- Base ~$425 — 13.2x the FY2027 consensus MEAN of $32.232. Cross-check: 14.4x FY2026E; 12.0x FY2028E; a 6.5% free-cash-flow yield at that price. Sensitivity, stated openly: 12x gives $387 — essentially the 50-day average — and 14x gives $451, roughly the street's median. The entire answer lives in a 12-14x band on one estimate row. The scenario: the exchange drag holds at the guided level, FY2027 comes in slightly below consensus, the buyback continues near $7 billion, and the multiple holds. +6.1%.
- Bull ~$555 — 16.5x the FY2027 consensus HIGH of $33.678. Cross-check: 15.7x FY2028E; 1.8% above the 52-week high of $545.13. The scenario: the enhanced premium tax credits are extended or replaced, the $1.0-1.2 billion drag reverses, FY2027 EPS clears $34, the buyback keeps retiring 8-10% of the shares a year, and the market re-rates a 19.4%-return-on-invested-capital business back toward its pre-drawdown multiple. +38.5%.
Base is 6.1% above spot; asymmetry roughly 1.70:1 (22.6% down, 38.5% up), before a dividend of 0.72%. That is the closest any name in this batch comes to the Buy bar without clearing it, and the reason it does not clear is stated in Section 10.
6. Knowledge base — zero name-level claims, and forty-one clinical false positives
Raw entity hits: 0. Free-text hits: 41. Name-level claims on HCA: 0. Discarded: 41.
The case-sensitive entity sweep ran HCA and HCA Healthcare across all 52,021 distilled claims. It returned NOTHING.
A free-text sweep on hospital returned 41 hits. Not one concerns a hospital operator as a business. The lane divides into four groups, all discarded:
- Clinical claims about hospitalised patients —
biotech_hangout2011-01-24 on intravenous neuraminidase inhibitors "most valuable for hospitalized/high-risk severely ill patients" and on early influenza treatment; and a run of COVID-therapeutic claims from 2020. - Health-data and regulatory claims —
lex_fridman2019-08-27 ("risk-averse hospital lawyers over-interpret gray areas"), 2019-09-23 at conviction 80 ("the binding constraint isn't algorithms but slow regulatory/medical-establishment adoption and hospital-controlled data access"), 2020-04-15 ("pharma won't make the maximally beneficial drug, hospitals mis-bill") and 2020-06-28 ("body data locked in hospital databases should be opened"). These are about AI and data policy, not about hospital economics. - Entirely unrelated —
rhonda_patrick2015-11-25 on a study in which a hospital room with a tree view "reduces pain medication, shortens hospitalization"; andmarko_papic2020-08-27 quoting David Samra on Compass Group, "the world's largest corporate caterer (food service in arenas, hospitals, universities)". - The
eli_lilly_ceocontamination, confirmed again — three claims filed under that channel dated 2020-09-04 concern Gilead and remdesivir, Roche and Actemra, and MSD / Merck / Ridgeback and molnupiravir. Not one is about Eli Lilly. This is the documented defect in whicheli_lilly_ceocarries other companies' claims — previously confirmed on Pfizer, Uber, Starbucks, a DTC-pharmacy claim under CDNS and again on DASH — and these three are excluded on content mismatch.
One hit is structurally relevant, mildly negative, eleven years old, and names no company. It is quoted at zero weight:
> 2015-03-24 · bullish · conviction 65 · horizon: principle · channel: biotech_hangout · no named speaker · categories: healthcare delivery, home health, value-based care
> "Healthcare is structurally shifting away from hospitals/institutions toward home-based care, requiring patient-empowerment tools and provider transparency."
That is the bear case for an acute-care hospital operator stated in a single sentence, and it is eleven years old and has been comprehensively wrong so far — HCA's revenue has risen from roughly $40 billion to $75.6 billion since it was made, and same-facility admissions grew 2.5% in the most recent quarter. We report it because a knowledge base that only surfaces claims that aged well is not a knowledge base, and we give it zero weight because it names no company.
Attribution note: all 41 hits carry a channel; several carry named speakers with speaker_role: independent. Under the standing rule that speaker_role is unreliable, the tags are noted rather than relied upon. No management voice relevant to HCA appears. No concentration test is meaningful across zero name-level claims.
Conclusion. Breadth 0, claim count 0, net conviction none. The Synthos knowledge base has nothing to say about HCA Healthcare, and the forty-one-hit sweep that appeared to find something found influenza antivirals, hospital architecture and a catering company. Acute-care hospital operation joins US gas midstream, cruise lines, insurance brokerage, environmental services, diversified industrials and architectural coatings on the list of genuine sector voids in this store.
7. Data integrity — a clean capex check and a demonstrable double count
Six findings.
1. capitalExpenditure — CHECKED AND VERIFIED CLEAN. FY2025 −$4,944M, FY2024 −$4,875M and FY2023 −$4,744M all match the 10-K consolidated statement of cash flows to the dollar, as do operating cash flows of $12,636M / $10,514M / $9,431M. The recomputed trailing free cash flow of $5,997M — built from the 10-Q's H1 2026 capex of $2,350M and H1 2025's $2,167M — reproduces capexToOperatingCashFlowTTM (0.4609) and freeCashFlowYieldTTM (6.9123%) exactly. capexToDepreciationTTM of 1.395 is plausible and corroborated. Datum and diagnostic tested separately per the MPC lesson; both pass. No repair applied.
2. totalDebt DOUBLE-COUNTS the same $1,853 million operating lease obligation — REJECTED, and this is the cleanest instance of the lease defect this programme has found. The vendor reports $50,198M at 2025-12-31 against the 10-Q debt note's $46,492M. The arithmetic is exact and it shows the duplication:
| Component | 2025-12-31 |
|---|---|
| Filing: total debt (commercial paper + other + senior notes, net) | $46,492M |
| of which due within one year | $4,889M |
Vendor shortTermDebt | $6,742M = $4,889M + $1,853M |
Vendor longTermDebt | $41,603M |
Vendor capitalLeaseObligationsNonCurrent | $1,853M |
Vendor totalDebt | $50,198M = $6,742M + $41,603M + $1,853M |
The $1,853 million right-of-use OPERATING lease obligation appears once inside shortTermDebt and again as capitalLeaseObligationsNonCurrent. The overstatement is $3,706 million, 8.0%, of which exactly half is a duplicate of the other half. This is more severe than the MRSH (9.5%), GD (22.2%) or T (32%) instances in kind if not in size, because those over-included leases once; this includes the same liability twice. The filing wins. All leverage figures in this dive use $46,492M (2025-12-31) and $49,718M (2026-06-30).
3. Negative shareholders' equity VOIDS the entire book-value and return-on-equity block — REJECTED with the mechanism shown. The 10-Q reports stockholders' deficit attributable to HCA Healthcare of MINUS $6,642 million at 30 June 2026 (minus $6,027 million at 31 December 2025), against noncontrolling interests of $3,433 million, for a total deficit of minus $3,209 million. Consequently: priceToBookRatioTTM −13.58x, returnOnEquityTTM −112.87%, debtToEquityRatioTTM −7.42x, financialLeverageRatioTTM −9.21x, bookValuePerShareTTM −$14.10, tangibleBookValuePerShareTTM −$61.95 and priceToFairValueTTM −13.58x. None of these is unflattering; all of them are meaningless. This is the MAR defect class (equity of −$3,771M) in a more extreme form, and the cause here is documented and benign: $27 billion of share repurchase across FY2022-FY2025 against $23 billion of net income. All are rejected, and the dive uses return on invested capital (19.4%) and the free-cash-flow yield instead. Note that the vendor's rating block awards a returnOnEquityScore of 1 — a score generated by a meaningless number.
4. Enterprise value omits $3,433 million of noncontrolling interests — corrected. enterpriseValueTTM of $134,522M implies $47,763M of net claims; the 10-Q rebuild (total debt $49,718M less cash $1,013M plus NCI $3,433M) gives $52,138M, 9.2% higher. The NCI class again — KKR 35.6%, MPC $6,772M, FCX 11.5% — at 2.5% of corrected enterprise value here. HCA's noncontrolling interests are substantial in absolute terms: they earned $231 million in the June quarter alone and received $334 million of distributions in the first half. Corrected EV/EBITDA is approximately 8.8x against the vendor's 8.5x, and the corrected figure is used.
5. goodwill reads ZERO for FY2025 — and it is a mapping artefact, not an impairment. The vendor shows goodwill falling from $9,770M (FY2024) to $0 while intangible assets rise from $323M to $10,293M. The 10-Q shows why: HCA reports a single combined line, "Goodwill and other intangible assets", at $10,293M (2025-12-31) and $10,662M (2026-06-30). The vendor split the line in FY2024 and did not in FY2025. Combined, the balance went from $10,093M to $10,293M — an increase of $200 million. There was no write-off. Flagged because a reader scanning bal_a would see an entire goodwill balance vanish and reasonably conclude something catastrophic had happened. Nothing did.
6. est.ebitdaAvg and est.ebitAvg carry a fixed-ratio fabrication signature — REJECTED. In every year from FY2023 to FY2030, ebitdaAvg is exactly 21.245% of revenueAvg and ebitAvg is exactly 16.470%. HCA's actual FY2025 EBITDA margin was 20.64%, and the company's own FY2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance of $15.4-16.1 billion on $77.0-79.5 billion of revenue implies 19.6-20.3%. The fabricated ratio exceeds both, in every year. All forward valuation uses epsAvg.
Also worth recording, and one is a partial defect. seg_prod sums to 96.7% of FY2025 revenue — a $2,458 million shortfall which is the self-pay and other payer category, precisely the line growing because of the exchange coverage losses; the block is used for payer mix and the omission is stated. seg_geo contains operating DIVISIONS rather than geographies (American, Atlantic and National Group), summing to 95.8% of revenue after the "Corporate and Other" line was dropped from FY2024 onward — the same category error as Williams' seg_geo in this batch, milder in consequence because HCA is 97.5% domestic. cf_a netIncome for FY2025 reads $6,784M — the amount attributable to HCA — where the 10-K's cash-flow statement begins from consolidated net income of $7,782M; the two differ by the $998M attributable to noncontrolling interests, and the vendor's substitution is noted rather than used. acquisitionsNet of −$128M for FY2025 is the net of the filing's −$397M of acquisitions and +$269M of sales, correctly computed. And the share count — the 10-Q's 217,963,300 shares outstanding at 2026-06-30 against 216.5 million implied by market capitalisation ÷ price, a 0.7% difference consistent with continued July repurchase.
Non-equity tripwire — checked and passed. HCA is common stock, $0.01 par value, NYSE-listed, per the 10-Q balance sheet (1,800,000,000 shares authorised, 217,963,300 outstanding). Price of $400.73 is not par-like; beta is 1.128; the dividend is a declared quarterly rate of $0.72, not a coupon; volume was 1.28M shares (~$513M of turnover); the 52-week band of $361.32 to $545.13 is a 51% range. No preferred stock is outstanding; the $3,433 million of noncontrolling interests is not this security. This is common equity.
Vendor composite rating — noted, and substantially discredited. B− / 3 overall, with 1 on return on equity, 1 on debt-to-equity, 1 on price-to-book, 5 on return on assets, 4 on discounted cash flow and 3 on price-to-earnings. Three of the six sub-scores — return on equity, debt-to-equity and price-to-book — are computed on a negative equity base and are therefore meaningless, and a fourth (debt-to-equity) is additionally computed on a total debt figure that double-counts a lease. Half the composite is built on numbers this dive rejects. It is not used.
8. Technicals
- Price $400.73. −26.47% from the 52-week high of $545.13 — by a wide margin the largest drawdown in this batch; +10.93% above the low of $361.32. Position within the annual range: 21st percentile.
- Above the shorter average, well below the longer: +3.5% above a 50-day of $387.42; 12.3% BELOW a 200-day of $457.13. The 50-day sits far below the 200-day — the shape of a stock that has broken down and is attempting to base.
- RSI 59.9 — neutral to firm, and notably not oversold despite the drawdown, which says the selling is orderly rather than panicked. MACD +2.78, positive.
- Maximum drawdown from peak over the trailing year: −26.47%, identical to the distance from the high.
- Relative performance, and the six-month window is the story: 3-month −6.17% against SPY +7.59% — fourteen points behind; 6-month −19.33% against SPY +11.09% and QQQ +15.71% — a THIRTY-point and thirty-five-point deficit; 12-month +12.28% against SPY +24.26%. The entire underperformance is a six-month event, and the pre-announcement that quantified its cause is dated 14 July 2026.
Today's move
HCA closed 2026-08-04 at $400.73, down 1.45% or $5.88 from $406.61. It opened at $401.95, traded $395.56 to $403.92, and closed in the upper half of a narrow range on 1.28 million shares. No company-specific filing is dated 2026-08-04; the last events were the 2026-07-28 10-Q and the 2026-07-29 commercial-paper 8-K.
The honest read: this is a genuinely discounted entry, and the discount is there for a reason that has not gone away. 26.5% below the high, 12.3% below the 200-day average, at 12.4x forward consensus with a 6.9% free-cash-flow yield. The setup is the mirror image of Sherwin-Williams and Royal Caribbean in this batch — no momentum, a real valuation cushion, and an unresolved fundamental question rather than a stretched one. That is the better shape of the two, and it is why this is Watch with a written trigger rather than Hold.
9. Insiders — eight transactions, none of them a trade
| Date | Person | Role | Type | Shares | Price | Held after |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-05-07 | Mike A. Marks | EVP and Chief Financial Officer | G-Gift (acquire) | 3,336 | — | 46,576 |
| 2026-05-07 | Mike A. Marks | EVP and Chief Financial Officer | G-Gift (dispose) | 3,336 | — | 0 |
| 2026-04-28 | Thomas F. Frist III | director, 10 percent owner | A-Award | 1,041 | — | 15,858 |
| 2026-04-28 | Michael W. Michelson | director | A-Award | 925 | — | 12,576 |
| 2026-04-28 | William R. Frist | director, 10 percent owner | A-Award | 809 | — | 13,740 |
| 2026-04-28 | Hugh F. Johnston | director | A-Award | 809 | — | 4,475 |
| 2026-04-28 | Andrea B. Smith | director | A-Award | 509 | — | 4,666 |
| 2026-04-28 | Wayne Joseph Riley | director | A-Award | 509 | — | 15,029 |
Not one open-market purchase and not one open-market sale. Six of the eight are routine annual director stock awards dated 28 April 2026; the remaining two are the two legs of a single gift transfer by the chief financial officer — an acquire and a dispose of the identical 3,336 shares, which nets to nothing and is the standard coding for a transfer between accounts or to a trust.
One item is worth noting for what it says about the shareholder register rather than the trade. Two of the eight directors — Thomas F. Frist III and William R. Frist — are coded director, 10 percent owner. The Frist family founded HCA and has been continuously associated with it since 1968. A founding family with 10%-owner status still on the board through a 26.5% drawdown is a governance datum, and it is a mildly reassuring one.
What the file does not contain: any transaction by chief executive Samuel N. Hazen, and no purchases by anyone during a 26.5% decline. In a name where the central question is whether the market has over-discounted a legislative headwind, the complete absence of insider buying is a real negative and it is reported as one. It is also, in fairness, consistent with a company in an open trading window for only part of the period.
10. Verdict, kill-criteria and flip conditions
Watch.
This is the closest any name in this batch comes to the Buy bar, and it is worth being precise about both halves of that sentence.
The case for. At $400.73 HCA trades at 12.4x the FY2027 consensus of $32.23, 13.55x the FY2026 consensus of $29.57 — which is itself the midpoint of the company's own revised guidance — and on a 6.91% free-cash-flow yield recomputed from filed figures rather than taken from the vendor. It generates $5,997 million of trailing free cash flow, earns 19.4% on invested capital, and returned $10,746 million to shareholders in FY2025 — 12.4% of today's market capitalisation in a single year, taking the share count from 249.981 million to 217.963 million in eighteen months. The business is not deteriorating: June-quarter revenue rose 8.7%, same-facility admissions 2.5%, equivalent admissions 2.7% and emergency-room visits 3.6%, and management left capital-expenditure guidance of $5.0-5.5 billion unchanged while cutting earnings guidance — which is what a company does when it believes the demand is intact and the payment is not. The stock is 26.5% below its high and 12.3% below its 200-day average, so there is a genuine valuation cushion rather than a momentum entry.
The case against, and it is one question. The central variable is legislative. HCA's own guidance assumes "the expiration of the enhanced premium tax credits", and it has already revised the exchange headwind from ($600)-($900) million in April to ($1.000)-($1.200) billion in July. The June quarter looked flat only because an approximately $400 million recurring headwind was offset by an approximately $400 million Medicaid catch-up covering twenty-one months. FY2027 faces the headwind without the catch-up, and the consensus asks for 9.0% growth anyway. Underneath, the balance sheet has no slack: stockholders' deficit of minus $6,642 million, total debt of $49,718 million up $3,226 million in six months, first-half operating cash flow down 25.8%, accounts receivable up 13.0% against 8% revenue growth, and a commercial paper ceiling doubled to $8.0 billion five days after the guidance cut.
Base fair value $425 (+6.1%), bear $310 (−22.6%), bull $555 (+38.5%), asymmetry 1.70:1. The bar is 2:1 and this is 1.70:1. We are not going to round it up.
And the honest counterweight to our own caution. If the enhanced premium tax credits are extended or replaced, a $1.0-1.2 billion pre-tax drag reverses — roughly $4 of annual EPS — and at 13x that is $52 per share, 13% of the price, arriving in a single legislative headline. We have no edge on that outcome and we say so. Anyone who does has a materially better basis for owning this than we do.
Pre-registered BUY trigger — what would make this Buy — Tactical:
- A price at or below approximately $365 with the FY2027 consensus of $32.23 intact — 11.3x FY2027E, a 7.6% free-cash-flow yield, roughly the 52-week low, and restoring approximately 2.2:1 asymmetry against the $310 bear and the $555 bull. This is a standing, gradeable level.
- Or, at any reasonable price, a September quarter in which the health-insurance-exchange impact comes in at or below the guided run-rate AND accounts receivable stop outgrowing revenue — the two together would demonstrate that the payer-mix shift has stabilised, which is the only thing this thesis needs.
- Or legislative extension of the enhanced premium tax credits, at which point the bull case becomes the base case.
Pre-registered KILL criteria — what would take this to Avoid:
- A third upward revision to the exchange headwind, above $1.2 billion for FY2026.
- FY2027 EPS guidance below $30, against a $32.23 consensus.
- Accounts receivable growing more than 5 percentage points faster than revenue for a second consecutive half. First half 2026: receivables +13.0%, revenue approximately +8%.
- The buyback falling below roughly $5 billion annualised while total debt continues to rise — the buyback is most of the consensus EPS growth.
- Net debt to EBITDA above 3.5x, or any credit-rating action constraining the $8.0 billion commercial paper programme.
- Same-facility admissions turning negative — the demand line has held throughout and is the one thing that has not gone wrong.
- Same-facility outpatient surgeries declining more than 5%, extending the −3.4% already reported in the highest-margin service line.
Where HCA fits in the Synthos Framework Portfolio. No position today. Tracked on the healthcare-services watch list at the $365 buy trigger above, with a 2% initial size and a 4% target if triggered. Sizing note: this is a name where the correct discipline is a limit order rather than a view — the business case is settled and the policy case is not, so the only lever available is the price paid. Logged as a tracked Synthos call (Watch) as of 2026-08-04 at $400.73, with the fair-value anchors, the buy trigger, the kill criteria and the 5a assumptions all gradeable.
Single biggest risk: the expiration of the enhanced premium tax credits, named in HCA's own guidance assumptions. The company has quantified the health-insurance-exchange payer-mix shift at approximately $400 million of pre-tax income in the June quarter alone and $1.0-1.2 billion for FY2026, having estimated $600-900 million as recently as April. Roughly 96% of HCA's revenue comes from government programmes or insurers, so the mix between them is decided in Washington and fifty state capitals, not in Nashville. The company can and does respond — expense management, capacity allocation, an aggressive buyback — but it cannot legislate. A $1.2 billion pre-tax headwind is roughly $950 million after tax, 16% of trailing free cash flow, and the free cash flow is what funds the buyback that is producing most of the earnings growth. The single fact that makes this Watch rather than Avoid is that at 12.4x forward earnings with a 6.9% free-cash-flow yield, a great deal of that is already in the price. The single fact that makes it Watch rather than Buy is that the company has revised the estimate once already, in the wrong direction, and does not claim to know where it settles.
Provenance & disclosures
- Traceability: ZERO name-level knowledge-base claims name HCA Healthcare out of 52,021 distilled claims. The case-sensitive entity sweep on HCA and HCA Healthcare returned nothing (raw entity hits 0, free-text hits 41, name-level 0, discarded 41; breadth 0, claim count 0, net conviction none). The free-text lane on "hospital" is entirely clinical or unrelated: influenza antivirals in hospitalised patients (
biotech_hangout, 2011); a study on hospital room tree views reducing pain medication (rhonda_patrick); HIPAA and "risk-averse hospital lawyers" and "hospital-controlled data access" as constraints on medical AI (lex_fridman, four claims, one at conviction 80); Compass Group's catering contracts in hospitals (marko_papicquoting David Samra); and a run of COVID-therapeutic claims. Three of the last are filed undereli_lilly_ceoand concern GILEAD and remdesivir, ROCHE and Actemra, and MSD / MERCK / RIDGEBACK and molnupiravir — a direct instance of the documented contamination in which that channel carries other companies' claims (previously confirmed on Pfizer, Uber, Starbucks, a DTC-pharmacy claim under CDNS and again on DASH) — and they are excluded on content mismatch. The single structurally relevant claim is quoted at zero weight and is mildly NEGATIVE for this business model:biotech_hangout, 2015-03-24, conviction 65 — "Healthcare is structurally shifting away from hospitals/institutions toward home-based care" — which is eleven years old and has been wrong so far, HCA's revenue having risen to $75.6 billion with same-facility admissions up 2.5% in the most recent quarter. We report it and grade it as wrong rather than excluding it. Acute-care hospital operation is a genuine sector void in this store, alongside US gas midstream, cruise lines, insurance brokerage, environmental services, diversified industrials and architectural coatings. Under the standing rule thatspeaker_roleis unreliable, the "independent" tags are noted rather than relied upon. No management voice relevant to HCA appears. No concentration test is meaningful across zero name-level claims. Quotes are verbatim from the stored claim text. - Data as-of: fundamentals — income statement, balance sheet, cash flow, debt note and payer detail through 2026-06-30, all filing-verified from the 10-Q filed 2026-07-28 and the 8-K earnings release filed 2026-07-24; the guidance revision, the exchange and Medicaid assumptions and the same-facility operating statistics from the pre-announcement 8-K filed 2026-07-14; annual figures for FY2025, FY2024 and FY2023 including the capital-expenditure series from the 10-K filed 2026-02-10 · estimates 2026-08-04 · prices 2026-08-04, quote timestamp 1785873603 = 2026-08-04T20:00:03Z ($400.73, −1.45%; 50-DMA $387.42; 200-DMA $457.13; RSI 59.9; MACD +2.78; beta 1.128) · knowledge-base claims 2026-08-04. HCA's fiscal year is the calendar year. All figures come from the Synthos vendor data file for HCA or from the SEC filings in the HCA archive; no figure comes from memory, recall or external retrieval.
- Filing archive contents: 10-K filed 2026-02-10 (fiscal 2025 — the source of the capital-expenditure and operating-cash-flow series); 10-Q filed 2026-04-29 (March 2026 quarter); 10-Q filed 2026-07-28 (June 2026 quarter — the source of the balance sheet, the debt note, the stockholders' deficit, the H1 cash-flow figures, the share-count series and the April 2026 notes issuance); 8-K filed 2026-07-14 — the PRE-ANNOUNCEMENT, which carries the complete preliminary second-quarter results, the second-quarter commentary quantifying the health-insurance-exchange impact at approximately $400 million and the Medicaid Supplemental Payment Program benefit at approximately $400 million, the revised FY2026 guidance table and the revised key-assumption table; 8-K filed 2026-07-24 (the formal second-quarter earnings release with the same-facility operating statistics and adjusted EBITDA); 8-K filed 2026-07-29 (Item 8.01 — the commercial paper programme increased from a $4.0 billion to an $8.0 billion maximum). All carry preserved
[TABLE]statement data (tables: true); the 10-Q's 34 preserved tables made every check in Section 7 possible. - Where the filings contradicted or corrected the vendor (detailed in Section 7):
totalDebt, at $50,198M against the 10-Q debt note's $46,492M — an 8.0% overstatement in which the same $1,853M right-of-use OPERATING lease obligation is counted TWICE, once insideshortTermDebt($6,742M = $4,889M due within one year + $1,853M) and again ascapitalLeaseObligationsNonCurrent— the cleanest instance of the lease defect class this programme has found, and more severe in kind than MRSH (9.5%), GD (22.2%) or T (32%), which over-included leases once rather than twice; the entire book-value and return-on-equity block, VOIDED by a stockholders' deficit attributable to HCA of MINUS $6,642M at 2026-06-30, makingpriceToBookRatioTTM(−13.58x),returnOnEquityTTM(−112.87%),debtToEquityRatioTTM(−7.42x),financialLeverageRatioTTM(−9.21x),bookValuePerShareTTM(−$14.10) andtangibleBookValuePerShareTTM(−$61.95) meaningless rather than merely unflattering — the MAR class in a more extreme form, caused by $27 billion of repurchase against $23 billion of net income across FY2022-FY2025;enterpriseValueTTM, which omits $3,433M of noncontrolling interests and understates enterprise value by 9.2% against a 10-Q rebuild of $52,138M, changing EV/EBITDA from 8.5x to approximately 8.8x;goodwillreading ZERO for FY2025, which is a MAPPING ARTEFACT rather than an impairment — the company reports a single combined "Goodwill and other intangible assets" line which rose from $10,093M to $10,293M, and the vendor split it in FY2024 and did not in FY2025;est.ebitdaAvg/ebitAvg, rejected for a fixed-ratio fabrication signature (exactly 21.245% and 16.470% ofrevenueAvgin every year FY2023-FY2030) against an actual FY2025 EBITDA margin of 20.64% and company FY2026 guidance implying 19.6-20.3%;seg_prod, which sums to 96.7% of revenue with the missing $2,458M being the self-pay category that is growing because of the exchange losses;seg_geo, which contains operating DIVISIONS rather than geographies and dropped its "Corporate and Other" line from FY2024 onward; and the absence from every vendor field of the 2026-07-14 pre-announcement and guidance cut, the April 2026 $3.0 billion notes issuance, the May 2026 $2.5 billion redemption and the 2026-07-29 doubling of the commercial paper programme. Where vendor and filing AGREED — recorded, because clean verifications are real findings: the capital-expenditure check PASSED (FY2025 −$4,944M, FY2024 −$4,875M and FY2023 −$4,744M all matching the 10-K to the dollar, with operating cash flows of $12,636M/$10,514M/$9,431M likewise, and a recomputed trailing free cash flow of $5,997M reproducingcapexToOperatingCashFlowTTMof 0.4609 andfreeCashFlowYieldTTMof 6.9123% exactly, with thecapexToDepreciationTTMdiagnostic of 1.395 plausible and corroborated);acquisitionsNetof −$128M for FY2025, correctly netting the filing's −$397M of acquisitions against +$269M of sales; and the share count (10-Q 217,963,300 outstanding at 2026-06-30 against 216.5M implied by market capitalisation ÷ price, a 0.7% difference consistent with continued July repurchase). - Basis note: consensus
epsAvgis on an adjusted basis excluding gains and losses on sales of facilities, losses on debt retirement, legal claims costs and impairments; the June 2026 quarter's GAAP diluted EPS of $7.62 and adjusted diluted EPS of $7.59 differ by $0.03, attributable to a $10 million gain on facility sales. Forward multiples in this dive useepsAvg; the trailing multiple of 13.42x is computed on GAAP diluted EPS and is shown separately. FY2026 company guidance of $28.70-$30.50 is on a GAAP diluted basis and the consensus of $29.573 sits at its midpoint, so the near year is fully marked to the July cut. - Estimate coverage: 14 analysts on FY2026 EPS, 15 on FY2027 — the anchor for all three fair values, with a range of $30.815 to $33.678 (9.3%) — and 11 on FY2028. FY2029 and FY2030 rest on FOUR analysts each and are excluded from every conclusion. Revenue coverage is broader at 18, 18 and 16.
- Peer note: the vendor peer set — Bristol-Myers Squibb, CVS Health, GSK, McKesson, Medtronic, Pfizer, Sanofi, Stryker, Tenet Healthcare and Vertex — contains four large-cap pharmaceutical companies, a device maker, a distributor and a pharmacy benefit manager. Tenet Healthcare is the ONLY acute-care hospital operator in the set, and Universal Health Services and Community Health Systems are absent. No peer-multiple comparison is drawn.
- Price-target note:
ptreportstargetHigh$579,targetLow$369,targetConsensus$455.19 andtargetMedian$442.5 — a genuine four-point distribution with a wide $210 range, appropriate to a name whose central variable is legislative. The low target of $369 is 7.9% below spot, so unlike Capital One and Williams in this programme the analyst distribution here does contain downside. Separately,quote.yearHigh/yearLow($556.52/$353.99) disagree withtech.hi52/lo52($545.13/$361.32) by 2.1% and 2.0%;techis used throughout. - Fair-value caveat: the $310 / $425 / $555 anchors are multiples of the FY2027 consensus adjusted EPS distribution — 10.1x the low of $30.815, 13.2x the mean of $32.232, and 16.5x the high of $33.678 — each cross-checked against the recomputed free-cash-flow yield (9.3%, 6.5% and 5.0% respectively). Price-to-book is NOT available as a cross-check because shareholders' equity is negative, and that is stated rather than substituted with a proxy. Stated arithmetic, not a discounted cash flow. The base is sensitivity-disclosed: 12x gives $387 and 14x gives $451. The whole answer lives in a 12-14x band on one estimate row.
- Timing: second-quarter 2026 results were PRE-ANNOUNCED on 2026-07-14 alongside a downward revision to full-year guidance, and formally released 2026-07-24, eleven days before this dive, with the 10-Q filed 2026-07-28. Adjusted EPS of $7.59 beat a $7.56 estimate by 0.4% — against a bar the company itself had reset ten days earlier. The next print is 2026-10-23, 80 days away; consensus adjusted EPS of $6.78 is BELOW the September 2025 actual of $6.96, so the street models a year-on-year decline. The most recent insider filing is dated 2026-05-07 and is a net-zero gift transfer. 2026-08-04 carried no company-specific filing.
- Accessibility note: no information in this dive is conveyed by colour. All emphasis is carried by bold text, table structure and explicit labelling.
- Not investment advice. Independent research, educational and informational only, never personalised. No recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security is made to any person.
- Version: 2026-08-04-full.