00:00 Speaker A
Right, time for some of today’s trending tickers. We’re watching Healthcare Insurance stocks, as well as Apple. First up, Healthcare Insurance is plunging at the announcement of severe Medicaid cuts in the Senate’s version of Trump’s big, beautiful bill. Centene appears to be the biggest loser today, but United Healthcare, Oscar are among some of the others, also seeing their shares plummet. JP Morgan downgrading Centene at the news, the insurer is pulling its full-year guidance for insurance plans sold on the Affordable Care Act exchange. Oscar Health receiving a downgrade from Raymond James and an underweight rating in newly initiated coverage by Barclays. So Centene, Barbara, they withdrew their financial guidance for 2025. They say earnings will fall short of expectations. Stock gets crushed. Your thoughts on that and maybe the broader sector as well. Well, clearly there was some nervousness today.
01:07 Barbara
Yeah, well, I think the stocks deserve to be crushed, given the percentage of revenues they have for Medicaid and it looks like, you know, it’s going back to the tax bill’s going back to the House, but Medicaid is going to be cut. And so the ramifications are going to be long-lasting for these companies. The question is, I think in other names like United Healthcare was down on this. United Healthcare maybe has 15% in Medicaid and United has its own issues. You know, but that’s one that probably could be bought on any weakness here. But Centene, you know, the downgrade, I think, is deserved. It’s probably going to go lower, people will stand back. So I think they’re not buyable right now. At some point, they probably will be when it’s really thoroughly discounted. There’s some light at the end of the tunnel, but that may have to wait till another administration.
02:19 Speaker A
Avoid for now.
02:20 Barbara
Yes.
02:23 Speaker A
All right. Well, next up, Jeffries upgrading Apple from underperform to hold at possible upside for the company’s third quarter. New data highlighting a 15% growth in global iPhone volumes in April and May with Chinese demand after discounting, pushing at 12% growth in March. Stemming from this, Jeffries raising its Q3 outlook for the technology and software manufacturer, with an emphasis on 9% growth, as opposed to the previous 1% forecast. So Jeffries does go to a hold, Barbara. They say Q3 could keep Apple stable in the near term. They say, we believe tariffs driven pulling tariffs driving pulling demand and share recovery in China would drive June quarter revenue EPS growth, they’re saying of around 8 and 10%. They expect only flat iPhone unit growth though, in the second half. Average target on the street now’s around 227. Stock is down around 15% so far this year.
03:31 Barbara
Right, but it’s up today in a big way and I think that was the important news because as you know, they have sort of blown the AI introduction. People are waiting for that. I think it’s really hurt their sales with the new models because you try to use Siri, you know, which is their their voice-enabled AI and it really doesn’t work that well. You know, compared to a ChatGPT, you can go get that. So what the news today was that they might be partnering with Open AI, you know, with another outside vendor, which would be smart not to do it inside. And that’s why the stock was up usually, and could probably keep running from here because so much is I think people are holding off on that. And we have to remember the big part of the Apple story is that 25% of the revenues are from services and that keeps climbing. And that’s their high margin business. And that’s where you have what, 2.3 billion active users, you know, and that keeps climbing. So I think Apple is probably has a little more room to run here.
04:54 Speaker A
Uh to your point, I did see analysts saying, Barbara, when that that news crossed, that maybe they decide to partner with OpenAI or Anthropic, there were at least some on the streets saying, you know, that would be that would be a smart bridge until they can start relying on their in-house technology.
05:15 Barbara
Yeah. I think it would be because they haven’t been able to figure it on their own and they brought in a high-level guy and that sort of they just keep missing deadline after deadline, so they have to do something. You know, because they’re really falling behind here.