UnitedHealth 4Q adj. profit tops Street

UnitedHealth Group's fourth-quarter adjusted profit beat Wall Street expectations as its Optum and UnitedHealthcare segments strengthened.

The largest U.S. health insurer earned $4.76 billion, or $5.03 per share, for the period ended Dec. 31.

Earnings, adjusted for amortization costs, came to $5.34 per share, easily beating Wall Street projections of $5.17 per share, according to a survey of analysts by Zacks Investment Research.

Revenue for the Minnetonka, Minnesota, company totaled $82.79 billion, matching Wall Street's forecasts. It saw growth at Optum and UnitedHealthcare mostly because it served more people.

UnitedHealthcare is a health insurance business that covers more than 50 million people, mostly in the United States. The fast-growing Optum segment runs one of the nation’s largest pharmacy benefit managers and a growing number of clinics and urgent care and surgery centers.

UnitedHealth Group Inc. has been delving deeper into delivering care through its Optum segment. The company is expanding clinic-based, surgical and home care while increasing the number of patients it covers under value-based payment arrangements.

Those involve basing doctor or care provider pay more on how a patient does instead of delivering a fee for each service. Health care bill payers, including the federal government, have grown more interested in these arrangements as they try to keep people healthy and curb expensive care like a hospital stay.

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Elements of this story were generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on UNH at https://www.zacks.com/ap/UNH