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What this page is: Delvantic's full research page for Universal Health Services, Inc. (UHS) — AI-driven forensic equity research: mechanical valuation models (DCF, EPV, anchored-PE, scenario) plus three independent AI lenses (Quality / Value / Sentiment). Everything below is rendered server-side; you are not missing content that requires JavaScript. All scores are predictions and research opinions, not financial advice.
Our current read (analysis of 2026-08-25): Designation Gem · Gem Score +42 (−100…+100 Quality+Value blend) · Quality 46 · Value 39 · Sentiment -10 (timing only, not weighted) · Composite fair value $213.57 vs $176.40 at analysis
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Universal Health Services, Inc.
UHS NYSEUniversal Health Services, Inc. is a healthcare services company that owns and operates a broad network of facilities across the United States. The company focuses on two primary segments: Acute Care Hospital Services and Behavioral Health Services. Its acute care operations include general hospitals, surgical hospitals, freestanding emergency departments, and ambulatory surgery and oncology centers, providing medical, surgical, and emergency care to a wide range of patients. The behavioral health segment delivers inpatient and outpatient services for mental health conditions, substance use disorders, and other behavioral health needs, serving children, adolescents, adults, and seniors. Through these segments, Universal Health Services plays a significant role in the medical care facilities industry, supporting both community-based and specialized care. Headquartered in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, the company is positioned as a major integrated provider in the U.S. healthcare system, offering essential services that span acute medical treatment, complex behavioral healthcare, and related outpatient services.
Price Overview
Price History (1 Year)
Revenue & Net Income Trend
| Period | Revenue | Net Income | Net Margin | YoY/QoQ |
|---|
Key Metrics
EPS (Diluted): 23.10
Total Equity: $7.41B
Shares: 64,462,000
Total Debt: $4.75B
Cash: $137.80M
EBITDA: $2.61B
Total Debt: $4.75B
Cash: $137.80M
Revenue: $17.36B
Revenue: $17.36B
Revenue: $17.36B
Total Equity: $7.41B
Tax Rate: 23.4%
Equity: $7.41B
Total Debt: $4.75B
Cash: $137.80M
Current Liabilities: $3.24B
Long-Term Debt: $4.00B
Total Debt: $4.75B
Total Equity: $7.41B
Shares: 64,462,000
Shares: 64,462,000
CapEx: -$1.02B
Shares: 64,462,000
Stock Price: $176.40
Net Income: $1.49B
Industry Benchmarks
Income Statement (Annual)
Last updated: Aug 25, 2026 1:15am (9h ago)| Metric | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $12.6B | $13.4B | $14.3B | $15.8B | $17.4B |
| Cost of Revenue | — | — | — | — | — |
| Gross Profit | — | — | — | — | — |
| Operating Expenses | $11.3B | $12.4B | $13.1B | $14.1B | $15.4B |
| Operating Income | $1.4B | $1.0B | $1.2B | $1.7B | $2.0B |
| Net Income | $991.6M | $675.6M | $717.8M | $1.1B | $1.5B |
| EBITDA | $1.9B | $1.6B | $1.7B | $2.3B | $2.6B |
| EPS | $11.99 | $9.23 | $10.35 | $17.16 | $23.42 |
| EPS (Diluted) | $11.82 | $9.14 | $10.23 | $16.82 | $23.10 |
Balance Sheet (Annual)
Last updated: Aug 25, 2026 1:00am (9h ago)| Metric | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cash & Equivalents | $115.3M | $102.8M | $119.4M | $126.0M | $137.8M |
| Total Current Assets | $2.3B | $2.5B | $2.8B | $2.8B | $3.4B |
| Total Assets | $13.1B | $13.5B | $14.0B | $14.5B | $15.5B |
| Current Liabilities | $2.0B | $1.9B | $2.0B | $2.2B | $3.2B |
| Long-Term Debt | $4.1B | $4.7B | $4.8B | $4.5B | $4.0B |
| Total Liabilities | $6.9B | $7.5B | $7.8B | $7.7B | $8.1B |
| Total Equity | $6.2B | $6.0B | $6.2B | $6.8B | $7.4B |
| Retained Earnings | $6.6B | $6.5B | $6.8B | $7.4B | $8.0B |
Cash Flow (Annual)
Last updated: Aug 25, 2026 1:15am (9h ago)| Metric | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Operating Cash Flow | $883.7M | $996.0M | $1.3B | $2.1B | $1.9B |
| Capital Expenditure | -$855.7M | -$734.0M | -$743.1M | -$943.8M | -$1.0B |
| Free Cash Flow | $28.0M | $262.0M | $524.7M | $1.1B | $849.2M |
| Acquisitions (net) | -$105.4M | -$20.3M | -$3.7M | -$19.0M | -$47.8M |
| Net Debt Issued / (Repaid) | -$3.0B | -$89.4M | -$85.5M | -$2.6B | -$43.5M |
| Dividends Paid | — | — | — | — | — |
| Stock Buybacks | -$1.2B | -$832.9M | -$547.4M | -$670.8M | -$968.0M |
| Net Change in Cash | -$1.1B | $21.9M | $13.6M | $10.3M | $46.6M |
Growth Trends (YoY %)
Last updated: Aug 25, 2026 1:15am (9h ago)| Metric | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue Growth | +6.0% | +6.6% | +10.8% | +9.7% |
| Gross Profit Growth | — | — | — | — |
| Operating Income Growth | -26.4% | +17.1% | +43.1% | +18.6% |
| Net Income Growth | -31.9% | +6.2% | +59.1% | +30.4% |
| EBITDA Growth | -16.4% | +10.0% | +30.0% | +15.3% |
Dividend History (Last 20)
Last updated: Aug 20, 2026 1:03am (5d ago)| Date | Dividend | Declaration | Record | Payment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-06-08 | $0.20 | — | — | — |
| 2026-03-02 | $0.20 | — | — | — |
| 2025-12-01 | $0.20 | — | — | — |
| 2025-09-02 | $0.20 | — | — | — |
| 2025-06-02 | $0.20 | — | — | — |
| 2025-03-03 | $0.20 | — | — | — |
| 2024-12-03 | $0.20 | — | — | — |
| 2024-09-03 | $0.20 | — | — | — |
| 2024-06-03 | $0.20 | — | — | — |
| 2024-02-29 | $0.20 | — | — | — |
| 2023-11-30 | $0.20 | — | — | — |
| 2023-08-31 | $0.20 | — | — | — |
| 2023-05-31 | $0.20 | — | — | — |
| 2023-02-28 | $0.20 | — | — | — |
| 2022-11-30 | $0.20 | — | — | — |
| 2022-08-31 | $0.20 | — | — | — |
| 2022-05-31 | $0.20 | — | — | — |
| 2022-02-28 | $0.20 | — | — | — |
| 2021-11-30 | $0.20 | — | — | — |
| 2021-08-31 | $0.20 | — | — | — |
Deep Analysis
Risk : Reward — if the last quarter repeats
Live · as of 2026-08-25 01:24| Case | Growth | Margin | Fair value | vs price ($176.40) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bull — recovery | +17% | 9.7% | $389.68 | +121% |
| Base — stabilizes | +11% | 8.4% | $289.64 | +64% |
| Bear — keeps slipping | +6% | 7.2% | $210.95 | +20% |
| Stress — last quarter repeats | +8% | 8.0% | $252.59 | +43% |
Narrative Economics
market-narrative step).
AI Lens 4th lens · how AI reaches this business · 5-yr
2026-08-13Reimbursement is set by government schedules and multi-year payer contracts, not by competitive price discovery, so AI-driven cuts in coding, documentation, prior-auth handling, scheduling and back-office labor across ~400 facilities drop straight into operating margin rather than being competed away.
Payers are deploying AI in utilization review and automated denial at scale; the highest-value target is exactly UHS's behavioral inpatient length-of-stay and acute case-mix intensity, so the provider's own AI gains can be transferred to insurers through denials, downgrades and slower cash conversion.
Whether the AI claims arms race nets in providers' or payers' favor — observable in denial and appeal-overturn rates, days in A/R, bad debt provision, and behavioral segment average length of stay versus admissions growth.
Licensed and certificate-of-need-constrained bed capacity (especially psychiatric, which almost nobody can newly permit), accreditation, in-network payer contracts, and a recruited base of psychiatrists and nurses in supply-short markets.
AI Lens thesis
UHS is a physical-asset, licensed-capacity business whose economics are decided by volume, acuity, reimbursement rates and labor cost — none of which cheap intelligence directly creates or destroys. AI reaches it through three channels: (1) internal cost — revenue cycle, coding, ambient documentation, staffing optimization and centralized shared services, where a 100k+ employee base and 11.5% operating margin mean even 1pp of labor/admin savings is a large earnings delta and, because prices are administratively set, that saving is retained rather than passed through; (2) the payer interface, where insurer AI raises denial density and attacks behavioral LOS and case-mix, potentially confiscating those same gains; (3) demand routing, where AI triage, digital mental-health tools and hospital-at-home monitoring could shave low-acuity outpatient volume while doing nothing to the acute psych and surgical cases that carry margin. Entrant threat is near zero — no amount of cheap software produces a licensed psychiatric hospital.
What the market may be underestimating
Upside Behavioral health is the least digitized, most documentation-heavy, most staffing-constrained care setting in the pool — ambient documentation plus AI scheduling can lift effective clinician capacity in a market where UHS is supply-constrained, converting a labor bottleneck into incremental census at high incremental margin.
Downside AI-assisted audit and coding-pattern analytics (RAC, payer, DOJ) can retrospectively attack case-mix intensity and behavioral admission criteria across a large facility base, turning documentation transparency into recoupment and reputational exposure rather than efficiency.
Outcome range spread 37
Growth Outlook
Analyzed 2026-08-25 01:23The question every valuation on this page silently assumes: is this company likely to grow? Judged forward — the business, its category, the world — against what's already printed.
Claude Reading
Starting from the raw tape: UHS is putting up TTM revenue of ~$18.1B (Q3'25 through Q2'26: $4.50+$4.49+$4.50+$4.64), TTM net income around $1.53B, and the quarterly cadence shows revenue growing ~9-10% YoY with margins holding in a 7.7-9.9% band. The Dec-25 quarter margin spike to 9.9% looks like a seasonal/one-time flatter — the two subsequent quarters normalized to 7.7-7.8%, which is closer to the durable run-rate. That matters: if you annualize the last two quarters ($4.57B avg rev × 4 × 7.75% margin), you get ~$1.42B in NI, which is *below* the 2025 full-year of $1.49B. So the earnings CAGR of 44% is real historically but the sequential picture is decelerating margin, not accelerating. At $176 with 59M shares (implied from $10.4B cap), we're at ~7x forward earnings and ~5.8x EV/EBITDA on a hospital operator with 20% ROE and $849M FCF. That is objectively cheap on any absolute framework.
The models broadly agree UHS is undervalued but disagree meaningfully on magnitude. The valuation synthesis pushes +56% upside to $275; market forces walks that back to "30-40% above current price"; the narrative layer calls it "fragile" fallen-angel with justified skepticism. I side with market forces here — the $275 signal-adjusted number is aggressive because it implicitly extrapolates the 2024→2025 earnings jump (from $1.14B to $1.49B, +30%) as durable, when the Q1/Q2 2026 prints suggest we're closer to plateau. A more defensible fair value uses normalized $1.45B NI × 10-11x (appropriate multiple for a levered, reimbursement-exposed hospital operator with mid-single-digit organic growth) = $14.5-16B market cap, or ~$245-270/share. Even the conservative version implies 40%+ upside. So the direction is right; the synthesis is just over-eager on multiple.
The contrarian case that deserves airtime: hospital operators structurally trade at 8-11x earnings, not 15x, because (1) labor costs (nursing wages) have inflected permanently higher post-COVID and rate negotiations with commercial payors lag, (2) behavioral health — UHS's crown jewel — faces genuine regulatory overhang (the 2020 DOJ settlement, ongoing scrutiny of admissions practices at psychiatric facilities, Medicaid reimbursement risk under any administration tightening spending), and (3) the balance sheet isn't pristine: $4.75B debt vs $138M cash and a 1.05 current ratio means limited cushion. Also worth flagging: the 7.6x PE is on TTM earnings that include the anomalously strong Q4'25 — strip that and you're at maybe 8.5x, still cheap but not distressed-cheap. The "growth is free" framing from valuation synthesis is technically true but ignores that hospital operators can lose 200-300 bps of margin in a single bad reimbursement cycle, which would take earnings from $1.5B to $1.1B fast.
Where the data is thin: no insider activity disclosed, no segment breakdown between acute care and behavioral health (which matters enormously — behavioral is the higher-margin, higher-controversy piece), and no visibility into commercial vs. Medicare/Medicaid payor mix trends. The "decelerating" quarterly trend flag is real and shouldn't be dismissed: revenue went $4.28B → $4.50B → $4.49B → $4.50B → $4.64B, which is stair-step growth with a soft middle, and margins have compressed 220 bps from the Dec'25 peak. That's the exact pattern that would validate the bear narrative if it continues one more quarter. My verdict: I agree with the undervalued call but dissent on magnitude — the $275 target requires believing hospital operators deserve a 12-13x multiple which history doesn't support. Fair value is $230-250, giving 30-40% upside with a real margin of safety at $176 because even the bear case (8x on $1.35B normalized NI) puts you around $180 — you're basically at bear-case floor. Buy, but size for the possibility that Q3'26 print shows further margin compression and the stock stays cheap for another 12 months before re-rating.
GPT Reading
What jumps out is how much of UHS’s “cheapness” is earned by actual operating repair rather than accounting optics. Revenue has gone from $12.64B in 2021 to $17.36B in 2025, a 37% increase, while operating income rose from $1.36B to $1.99B and net income from $992M to $1.49B. The key point is that 2021 was not the clean baseline; profits then dipped hard in 2022-2023 before recovering, so today’s earnings are not some uninterrupted compounding story but a post-disruption normalization plus growth. Even so, the recent run is real: first-half 2026 revenue is $9.14B versus $8.38B in first-half 2025, up about 9%, and net income is $707M versus $670M, up about 5.5%. That tells me growth is continuing, but margin expansion has cooled. The last four quarters produced about $1.53B of net income; against a $10.4B market cap, that is roughly a 6.8x trailing earnings multiple for a business still growing high single digits.
The market is plainly discounting either a coming margin giveback or some structural risk around reimbursement and labor, because the valuation is low on every conventional lens: 7.6x earnings, 0.65x sales, 5.8x EV/EBITDA, 1.53x book. For a company earning a 20% ROE and 12.7% ROIC, that is not a normal multiple unless the earnings are peaking or fragile. I think the market is too pessimistic. UHS generated $1.86B of operating cash flow in 2025 and still had $849M of free cash flow after a heavy $1.02B of capex. That matters because this is a capital-intensive hospital operator; if it can self-fund over $1B of annual reinvestment and still throw off nearly $850M of FCF, the earnings have substance. Net debt is meaningful at about $4.6B, but not oppressive relative to a business likely doing around $3B of EBITDA if the EV/EBITDA figure is directionally right. This looks less like distress and more like a high-quality but unloved operator.
The more subtle read is that the stock does not need heroic assumptions. If net income merely holds around the current $1.45B-$1.55B run-rate, a 9x-10x earnings multiple would support something like $208-$232 of equity value before even giving credit for further growth. That is not an aggressive target for a business that has grown revenue from $15.83B in 2024 to an annualized pace above $18B in 2026. The quarterly pattern also doesn’t scream deterioration: margins in the last six quarters have mostly stayed in a 7.7%-8.3% band, with a stronger 9.9% in the 2025 fourth quarter. In other words, after the big recovery from 2023 to 2025, 2026 looks more like consolidation at healthy profitability than reversal. I read that as the market anchoring too much on healthcare operator cyclicality and not enough on the durability of UHS’s current earnings base.
The best bear case is that this is exactly the kind of stock that screens cheap at the top of the cycle. The latest two quarters show the issue: revenue grew 8%-9% year over year, but net margin in 2026 Q1-Q2 was 7.8% and 7.7%, down from 8.2% in 2025 Q2 and well below 9.9% in 2025 Q4. So earnings are still growing, but much more slowly than sales, which is often how reimbursement pressure and labor inflation start to show up. The current ratio is only 1.05 and cash is just $138M against $4.75B of debt, so while leverage is manageable, liquidity is not especially plush for a hospital operator exposed to policy and payor friction. A skeptic would also point out that 2021 net income was $992M, then 2022-2023 slumped to $676M and $718M before recovering; that history argues against slapping a premium multiple on “normalized” earnings because normalization in this industry can reverse fast. I weigh that risk seriously, but at under 8x earnings and under 6x EV/EBITDA, I think a lot of that cyclicality is already paid for.
What would change my mind is evidence that 2026 is the beginning of a margin slide rather than a pause. If revenue keeps growing high single digits but net margin drops into the 6%-7% range for multiple quarters, or if annual operating cash flow falls materially below $1.6B while capex stays near $1B, then the equity deserves to stay cheap. Likewise, a debt-funded acquisition or any sign that returns on capital are being sacrificed for expansion would weaken the thesis. On the other hand, if UHS can exit 2026 with revenue around $18.2B-$18.5B, net income at or above $1.45B, and free cash flow still around $800M+, I think the stock should re-rate meaningfully from here.
Grok Reading
UHS at $176 is a classic case of the market refusing to pay for already-delivered earnings improvement. Revenue has climbed from $12.64B in 2021 to $17.36B in 2025, a clean 10.3% CAGR, while net income recovered from the $676–718M trough in 2022–23 to $1.49B in 2025—an earnings CAGR near 44% off that base. The last eight quarters show sequential top-line progress from $3.96B to $4.64B with net margins holding in a 7.7–9.9% band; trailing economics support a 7.6x P/E, 5.8x EV/EBITDA, 0.65x sales, and roughly 8% FCF yield on $849M of free cash flow against a $10.4B equity value. A business printing 20% ROE and 12.7% ROIC at those multiples is being priced as if the improvement is temporary or fictitious. Operating cash flow of $1.86B comfortably funds $1.02B of capex and leaves real residual cash, so the quality of the earnings is not the issue the multiple implies.
What the numbers actually say is that UHS has re-rated operationally without a corresponding multiple re-rating. Acute and behavioral volumes, rate, and mix have produced durable mid-to-high single-digit organic growth plus margin recovery from the post-COVID labor shock; annual operating income rose from $1.00B in 2022 to $1.99B in 2025. Debt of $4.75B against $7.41B of equity (D/E 0.64) is real leverage, and cash of only $138M keeps the balance sheet tight, but interest coverage from nearly $2B of operating profit is adequate and the enterprise is not distressed. At 5.8x EBITDA the market is embedding either structural reimbursement cuts, permanent labor inflation above rate growth, or a sharp mean-reversion in behavioral margins that the trailing run-rate does not yet show. Growth is effectively free at this price; the no-growth earnings power alone clears the current capitalization with room to spare.
The strongest counter-argument is visible in the recent quarterly margin fade and the secondary flags. Net margin dropped from 9.9% in Q4 2025 to 7.7–7.8% in the first half of 2026 even as revenue kept rising, which is exactly the pattern skeptics cite when they argue labor and payor pressure will claw back the 2024–25 expansion. Revenue growth is decelerating on a year-over-year basis, the stock sits below sector valuation benchmarks, and the macro tape is labeled headwinds. Cash is thin relative to $4.75B of debt, capex remains heavy, and behavioral health carries genuine regulatory and reputational optionality that does not appear in a clean DCF. A smart opponent would say the 7.6x multiple is earned insurance against a return to 6% net margins and sub-$1B earnings, and that the composite fair-value targets near $214–275 overstate durability. Those points have weight; I simply weigh the multi-year evidence of $1.5B earnings power and $850M FCF more heavily than two softer margin quarters, and I treat the regulatory overhang as a reason for a discount—not a 40–50% discount to normalized value.
I would flip to neutral or overvalued if trailing net margins settle sustainably below 7% with flat-to-down EBITDA, if CMS or major commercial payors announce material behavioral rate cuts that management cannot offset, or if FCF falls below $500M for a full year while net debt rises. Conversely, two more quarters of revenue above $4.6B with margins back above 8.5% and any reduction in net leverage would force a higher multiple and confirm the undervaluation case at current levels. Until one of those paths resolves, the stock screens as a mature earner the market is still treating like a damaged cyclical.
Big-3 Panel — where each AI stands
Advanced Analysis Forensic deep-dive · separate lenses
UHS is executing well as a mature operator: revenue grew from 12.64B in 2021 to 17.36B in 2025 (roughly 8% CAGR), operating margin recovered from a 2022 trough of 7.5% back to 11.5%, and net income rose from 991.6M to 1.49B. Free cash flow expanded materially from 28M in 2021 to 849.2M in 2025 (with 1.12B in 2024), and earnings quality checks are clean: OCF/NI of 1.44x, accruals of -2.9% of assets, Altman Z of 3.04 in the safe zone. Diluted share count fell from 83.7M to 64.5M, a -6.3% CAGR, with buybacks running nearly 10x SBC - genuine per-share value concentration, not optical.
Verify before trusting this (6)
- Debt maturity schedule and weighted average interest rate on the 4.6B net debt
- Payer mix and Medicare/Medicaid exposure, and any pending reimbursement rate changes
- Behavioral-health segment: ongoing DOJ/regulatory investigations or litigation reserves
- Reconciliation of the 2024-to-2025 FCF decline (working capital, capex, or one-timers)
- Insider transaction pattern and any related-party dealings given the founding family control structure
- Same-facility admissions and revenue-per-adjusted-admission trends to confirm organic vs pricing growth
The composite FV of $213.57 and DCF of $225.82 imply ~20-28% upside from $176.40, and the EPV floor of $189.08 is itself above the current price - meaning even a no-growth capitalization of current earnings suggests the stock is not expensive. The signal-adjusted $275.50 (56% upside) looks aggressive and I discount it; it likely bakes in optimistic behavioral-health growth and margin recovery that the bear case legitimately questions. Anchoring on the DCF/EPV band ($189-$226) gives a deserved value roughly $205-$215 for a strong-quality operator with real leverage.
Verify before trusting this (5)
- forward guidance on behavioral-health same-facility revenue and EBITDA margin
- labor cost trajectory vs commercial rate increases
- any CMS or state Medicaid rate actions affecting behavioral segment
- buyback pace and capital allocation commentary
- one-time items or divestitures inflating trailing EBITDA
The macro tape is barely leaning tailwind (score +18, VIX at a subdued 15.9, S&P only 1.9% off highs), and with a beta of 1.06 UHS moves roughly in line with the market - so the tape itself neither rescues nor punishes this name. What matters more is the active narrative: UHS is a fallen-angel behavioral-health operator with a fragile, moderate-intensity story and low cult following. That means limited enthusiastic buyers on dips and limited panic sellers on wobbles - a muted sentiment profile rather than a directional one. The bear frame (reimbursement compression, labor inflation, regulatory scrutiny in behavioral health) is the louder ambient story in the sector, but nothing in the current flow suggests it is acutely intensifying on UHS specifically. Higher-for-longer rates (10y 4.74%) and a stretched market PE 25.8 are a low-grade drag on all equities, and hospital operators do carry some rate sensitivity via leverage - though UHS is actively delevering (D/E 0.79 to 0.64), which partially neutralizes that press. Net: a modest, mixed sentiment backdrop where the narrative is neither running ahead of fundamentals nor collapsing, and macro is close to neutral for this profile.
Verify before trusting this (4)
- Any DOJ or state-level probe headlines around behavioral-health billing that would harden the bear narrative
- Managed-care rate commentary from peers (HCA, THC) as a read-through on reimbursement tone
- Analyst target revisions post next print - direction of drift matters more than level
- VIX break above 20 or S&P drawdown deepening, which would activate the fragile narrative's downside
UHS is a physical-asset, licensed-capacity business whose economics are decided by volume, acuity, reimbursement rates and labor cost — none of which cheap intelligence directly creates or destroys. AI reaches it through three channels: (1) internal cost — revenue cycle, coding, ambient documentation, staffing optimization and centralized shared services, where a 100k+ employee base and 11.5% operating margin mean even 1pp of labor/admin savings is a large earnings delta and, because prices are administratively set, that saving is retained rather than passed through; (2) the payer interface, where insurer AI raises denial density and attacks behavioral LOS and case-mix, potentially confiscating those same gains; (3) demand routing, where AI triage, digital mental-health tools and hospital-at-home monitoring could shave low-acuity outpatient volume while doing nothing to the acute psych and surgical cases that carry margin. Entrant threat is near zero — no amount of cheap software produces a licensed psychiatric hospital.
None surfaced.
Verify before trusting this (8)
- SG&A and admin cost per admission
- Salaries/wages as % of revenue
- CMS market-basket productivity cuts
- Contract labor as % of salaries
- Nurse/psychiatrist vacancy rates
- New behavioral bed additions
- Behavioral average length of stay
- Revenue per adjusted patient day
Hospital demand is post-pandemic normalized but structurally supported by aging demographics, deferred-care catch-up and an acute shortage of behavioral capacity — a demand backdrop that is largely macro-insensitive. The swing variable is not patients, it is who pays: exchange subsidy rollback and legislated caps on state-directed Medicaid payments shift the mix toward less-remunerative or uncompensated care over the medium term, while high rates (10y 4.74) raise the cost of the capex needed to add beds. Labor markets have loosened versus the 2022 crisis but wage levels are permanently reset higher. Net: volume-safe, price/mix-at-risk — favorable for the next several quarters, tighter afterward.
When we made this prediction on Aug 20, 2026, UHS was $173.28. We expect it to be $197.50 by Feb 2027, and we consider it great value under $165.00. This is an early model (v0.6.0) — the direction is more reliable than the exact price. Made Aug 20, 2026.
Blue is our prediction, starting the day we made it. Grey is a slower route to the same place — the same destination, taking longer. Black is the actual price, so you can see how we are doing.