UnitedHealth Q3 2026: EPS beats at $4.56, revenue slips 0.4%
UnitedHealth beat the $4.18 consensus with $4.56 of GAAP earnings, but revenue fell 0.4% and net income dropped 24.5% from the second quarter. Read this as a margin-repair quarter rather than a growth quarter: the medical care ratio improved to 88.4%, helped by $610 million of favorable reserve development, while membership kept shrinking. The scorecard below separates the profit beat from the revenue problem.
1 · Expected vs. Actual
Free preview below$4.56 of GAAP EPS beat the $4.18 consensus by about 9.1%, and adjusted EPS came in at $4.69. The trend inside 2026 is the other direction: $6.90 in Q1, $6.04 in Q2, $4.56 now. Net income of $4.11 billion was still up 75.0% year over year from $2.35 billion, when the medical care ratio sat at 89.9%.
Revenue was $112.69 billion, down 0.4% from $113.16 billion a year earlier and barely above the $112.03 billion booked in the second quarter. UnitedHealthcare produced $86.33 billion and Optum $66.88 billion, but those segment figures overlap — they sum to $154.64 billion against $112.69 billion consolidated because of roughly $41.9 billion of eliminations. Members are the soft spot: 48.3 million people served versus 50.1 million a year ago.
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Figures on this page come from the company's original SEC filings. The analysis is generated automatically and checked against validation rules, but may still contain errors or omissions. Not investment advice. · Generated 2026-11-04
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