The time has not yet come to remove your chips from the table: Centene Corp (CNC)

With 4.05 million shares changed hands, the volume of the stock remained lighter than its average volume of 5.25 million shares. During the session, the Healthcare Plans company that operates in wider Healthcare sector, reached to the highest price of $58.84 whereas the lowest price it dropped to was $57.31. The 52-week range on CNC shows that it touched its highest point at $80.59 and its lowest point at $55.03 during that stretch. It currently has a 1-year price target of $77.28. Beta for the stock currently stands at 0.55.

Price Performance and Earnings:

Stock performance is one of the indicators that investors use to determine whether they will profit from a stock. The price performance of CNC was down-trending over the past week, with a drop of -2.51%, but this was up by 0.99% over a month. Three-month performance dropped to -0.91% while six-month performance fell -18.37%. The stock lost -25.72% in the past year, while it has lost -4.32% so far this year. A look at the trailing 12-month EPS for CNC yields 6.25 with Next year EPS estimates of 8.08. For the next quarter, that number is 2.33. This implies an EPS growth rate of 1.65% for this year and 10.83% for next year. EPS is expected to grow by 9.21% annually over the next five years; however, over the past five years, the company experienced an annual growth rate of 14.96%.

Float and Shares Shorts:

At present, 495.91 million CNC shares are outstanding with a float of 490.60 million shares on hand for trading. On 2025-02-28, short shares totaled 6.05 million, which was 122.00001 higher than short shares on 1738281600. In addition to Ms. Sarah M. London as the firm’s CEO & Director, Mr. Kenneth John Fasola serves as its President.

Institutional Ownership:

Through their ownership of 0.98917 of CNC’s outstanding shares, institutional investors have minority control over the company.

An Overview of Recent Financials:

Understanding a company as a customer does not mean you will understand it as an investor. The wise investor uses quantitative research to analyze metrics such as revenue, net income, and earnings. In its fiscal quarter reported on 2024-12-31, CNC reported revenue of $40805000000.0 and operating income of $175000000.0. The EBITDA in the recently reported quarter was $489000000.0 and diluted EPS was $nan.

Analysts Ratings:

Reading analyst opinions is an effective way to decide where to invest, and there are several opinions available for CNC since 14 analysts follow the stock currently. There are 7 analysts who recommend BUY ratings, while 0 suggest SELL ratings. Of the remaining analysts, 7 believe that the stock is worth HOLDING, 0 give it an OVERWEIGHT rating, and 0 thinks that it’s UNDERWEIGHT. In the same way, a target price assigned to a stock can also reveal much about its potential. With CNC analysts setting a high price target of 93.0 and a low target of 53.0, the average target price over the next 12 months is 78.62471. Based on these targets, CNC could surge 60.46% to reach the target high and fall by -8.56% to reach the target low. Reaching the average price target will result in a growth of 35.65% from current levels.

EPS: Estimates vs Actual

It is also common to use earnings estimates to evaluate a firm’s growth potential and to determine trading strategy. Analysts have provided yearly estimates in a range of $6.84538 being high and $6.82534 being low. For CNC, this leads to a yearly average estimate of $6.83536. Based on analyst estimates, the high estimate for the next quarter is $2.72 and the low estimate is $1.84. The average estimate for the next quarter is thus $2.29.