CE 100 Index Slips 0.2% as United Healthcare Plunges After Earnings

The CE 100 Index barely budged in a holiday-shortened trading week, down 0.2%.  Earnings continued to dominate the headlines, and six pillars were lower, while five gained marginal ground.

United Healthcare Declines on Medicare Advantage Outlook

Leading to the downside in the “Be Well” segment of the CE 100 Index, which lost 3.7%, United Healthcare shares plunged 24%. The company reported earnings that CEO Andrew Witty said, showed “overall performance that was frankly unusual and unacceptable,” according to remarks on the conference call with analysts. The company lowered its full-year adjusted earnings guidance to $26-$26.50 per share, down from $29.50-$30.

Revised guidance was lower than the Street expected, and the outlook was driven in part by “heightened care activity indications within [its] Medicare Advantage businesses, which became visible as the quarter closed, far above the planned 2025 increase, which was consistent with the elevated levels in 2024,” the release said. “This activity was most notable within physician and outpatient services.”

Nvidia shares lost more than 8%, taking the Enablers segment of the CE 100 Index 2.3% lower.

Nvidia said Monday (April 14) that its artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputers will be built in the U.S. for the first time, starting in the next 12 to 15 months.  The company is working with manufacturing partners to build two manufacturing plants in Texas — one in Houston with Foxconn and one in Dallas with Wistron — and expects to begin mass production within that timeframe.

Also within the Enablers group, and as reported this week, the antitrust case against Meta Platforms in federal district court began with FTC attorney Daniel Matheson telling the judge Meta “decided that competition was too hard and it would be easier to buy out their rivals than to compete with them,” according to reports from inside the courtroom.  The FTC is seeking to force Meta to unwind its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, which the commission originally had approved in 2012 and 2014, respectively. The tech giant has countered that the case is “weak” and that the case engages in “revisionist history.”

Payments-related names countered some of these losses. BNPL stalwart Sezzle was 16% higher. FIS shares were 3.1%.  Global Payments sold its issuer solutions business to FIS for $13.5 billion and bought Worldpay for a net price of $22.7 billion. Worldpay is co-owned by FIS and private equity firm GTCR.

PayPal shares lost 2.5%. The company announced that it and TerraPay are teaming to promote cross-border payments in the Middle East and Africa. The partnership is designed to speed cross-border money movement, while making payments more accessible by connecting banks, mobile wallets and financial institutions. TerraPay — via secure PayPal account linking — will act as an enabler, allowing mobile wallet and bank users across the MENA region to transfer funds to their PayPal accounts.

American Express shares were up a slight 0.1%.

PYMNTS’ coverage of first quarter earnings indicated that FX-adjusted basis, revenue rose 8% year over year — or 9% when factoring out the leap year impact — to $17 billion. Total Card Member spending also grew at 7% excluding the extra day.  The full-year forecast for 8% to 10% revenue growth and earnings per share between $15 and $15.50, the ranges first set in January.

“Our millennial and Gen Zs are performing significantly better both from a FICO perspective and from a delinquency perspective than the industry,” CEO Stephen Squeri said on the conference call with analysts.