Market Movements: UnitedHealth and Alcoa Report Disappointing Results While Eli Lilly Shows Promise

For UnitedHealth and Alcoa, these were harsh reversals in their recent earnings announcements, leading to extreme reactions in their stock prices. UnitedHealth, the largest health insurer in the country, announced $7.20 in adjusted earnings per share. The company brought in record-setting revenue of $109.58 billion for the first quarter. Analysts were expecting earnings of $7.29 and revenues of $111.60 billion. Those results drastically underperformed expectations. In the wake of this shocking announcement, UnitedHealth’s stock crashed nearly 22%.

Though these numbers have come in underwhelming, UnitedHealth has held firm on its revenue projection for 2025, a vote of confidence for its long-term strategy. The telecom giant announced no deterioration in customer trends. That stability continues despite the cloud of uncertainty hanging over possible future tariff policy.

Alcoa experienced a rude awakening in the first quarter. They ended up posting a $3.37 billion revenue, missing the $3.53 billion that was expected based on LSEG analyst projections. Despite Alcoa’s earnings beating analyst estimates, the huge revenue miss caused Alcoa’s stock price to crater nearly 5%. The company’s overall revenue for the period came in at $7.73 billion, which was well short of the consensus estimate of $8.03 billion.

D.R. Horton’s gained 3% on an otherwise disappointing second quarter results that came in beneath analysts’ expectations. This divergence is reflective of a more positive investor sentiment in certain sectors.

In a major corporate development, Global Payments announced its acquisition of Worldpay for $24.25 billion from Fidelity National Information Services and a private equity firm. This was bad news for Global Payments’ stock, which plunged 16%. Conversely, Fidelity National Information Services had an 8.6% increase on its stocks after the acquisition announcement.

Eli Lilly last month announced positive results from its daily obesity pill in late-stage clinical trials. Such results would help shore up investor confidence as the company looks to build on successes to develop additional product lines.