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What this page is: Delvantic's full research page for The Cigna Group (CI) — 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 2026-08-23): Designation Watch · Gem Score +20 (−100…+100 Quality+Value blend) · Quality 32 · Value 11 · Sentiment -24 (timing only, not weighted)
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profile-header/price-overview— company profile, live quote, market capextended-analysis— the core: three AI lens reads with findings, scores, and the analyst memofuture-predictions— our forward price-band predictionsmarket-narrative/ai-findings/gpt-critique— narrative context, cross-model findings, and an adversarial critique of our own analysis (near the end of the document)- Members-only sections (render as login gates for anonymous readers):
price-history,income-trend,key-metrics,financials(statement tables),insider-trading. The analysis above is public; the raw data tables require a free account.
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The Cigna Group
CI NYSEThe Cigna Group is a global health company that provides a broad range of health services and solutions to individuals, employers, health plans, and government organizations. Through its Evernorth Health Services segment, the company delivers pharmacy benefit management, home delivery and specialty pharmacy services, specialty drug distribution, and care delivery and management solutions that support cost-effective and clinically focused care. Its Cigna Healthcare segment offers comprehensive medical coverage and coordinated health solutions across U.S. commercial, government, and international markets, serving employers and other institutional clients as well as individuals. The Other Operations and Corporate segments encompass remaining business activities and centralized functions, including certain ongoing and exited businesses, corporate overhead, and shared services. Headquartered in Bloomfield, Connecticut, and founded in 1792, The Cigna Group plays a significant role in the managed health care and health services sector by integrating benefits, clinical programs, and pharmacy capabilities to support access to healthcare and coordinated patient care.
Price Overview
Price History (1 Year)
Revenue & Net Income Trend
| Period | Revenue | Net Income | Net Margin | YoY/QoQ |
|---|
Key Metrics
EPS (Diluted): 22.18
Total Equity: $41.87B
Shares: 268,563,000
Total Debt: $592.00M
Cash: $7.68B
EBITDA: $11.98B
Total Debt: $592.00M
Cash: $7.68B
Revenue: $274.90B
Revenue: $274.90B
Revenue: $274.90B
Total Equity: $41.87B
Tax Rate: 19.2%
Equity: $41.87B
Total Debt: $592.00M
Cash: $7.68B
Current Liabilities: $56.34B
Long-Term Debt: $0.00
Total Debt: $592.00M
Total Equity: $41.87B
Shares: 268,563,000
Shares: 268,563,000
CapEx: $0.00
Shares: 268,563,000
Stock Price: $272.28
Net Income: $5.96B
Industry Benchmarks
Income Statement (Annual)
Last updated: Aug 11, 2026 2:34pm (12d ago)| Metric | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $174.1B | $180.5B | $195.3B | $247.1B | $274.9B |
| Cost of Revenue | $117.6B | $124.8B | $133.8B | $182.5B | $215.0B |
| Gross Profit | $56.5B | $55.7B | $61.5B | $64.6B | $59.9B |
| Operating Expenses | $48.6B | $47.3B | $52.9B | $55.2B | $50.7B |
| Operating Income | $7.9B | $8.4B | $8.5B | $9.4B | $9.2B |
| Net Income | — | — | $5.2B | $3.4B | $6.0B |
| EBITDA | $10.9B | $11.4B | $11.6B | $12.2B | $12.0B |
| EPS | $15.87 | $21.54 | $17.57 | $12.25 | $22.33 |
| EPS (Diluted) | $15.73 | $21.30 | $17.39 | $12.12 | $22.18 |
Balance Sheet (Annual)
Last updated: Aug 11, 2026 12:27pm (12d ago)| Metric | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cash & Equivalents | $5.1B | $5.9B | $7.8B | $7.6B | $7.7B |
| Total Current Assets | $36.1B | $30.1B | $37.4B | $48.9B | $47.8B |
| Total Assets | $154.9B | $143.9B | $152.8B | $155.9B | $157.9B |
| Current Liabilities | $43.6B | $41.2B | $48.7B | $58.0B | $56.3B |
| Long-Term Debt | — | — | — | — | — |
| Total Liabilities | $107.7B | $99.0B | $106.4B | $114.6B | $116.0B |
| Total Equity | $47.2B | $45.0B | $46.4B | $41.2B | $41.9B |
| Retained Earnings | $32.6B | $37.9B | $41.7B | $43.5B | $47.9B |
Cash Flow (Annual)
Last updated: Aug 11, 2026 2:34pm (12d ago)| Metric | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Operating Cash Flow | $7.2B | $8.7B | $11.8B | $10.4B | $9.6B |
| Capital Expenditure | — | — | — | — | — |
| Free Cash Flow | — | — | — | — | — |
| Acquisitions (net) | -$1.8B | $0 | -$447.0M | -$131.0M | -$597.0M |
| Net Debt Issued / (Repaid) | -$318.0M | -$500.0M | -$1.5B | $1.5B | $261.0M |
| Dividends Paid | -$1.3B | -$1.4B | -$1.5B | -$1.6B | -$1.6B |
| Stock Buybacks | -$7.7B | -$7.6B | -$2.3B | -$7.0B | -$3.6B |
| Net Change in Cash | -$4.7B | $428.0M | $2.4B | $594.0M | -$1.2B |
Growth Trends (YoY %)
Last updated: Aug 11, 2026 2:34pm (12d ago)| Metric | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue Growth | +3.7% | +8.2% | +26.6% | +11.2% |
| Gross Profit Growth | -1.5% | +10.4% | +5.1% | -7.3% |
| Operating Income Growth | +6.0% | +1.4% | +10.3% | -2.3% |
| Net Income Growth | — | — | -33.5% | +73.5% |
| EBITDA Growth | +4.5% | +1.9% | +5.4% | -1.8% |
Dividend History (Last 20)
Last updated: Aug 11, 2026 12:27pm (12d ago)| Date | Dividend | Declaration | Record | Payment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-06-04 | $1.56 | — | — | — |
| 2026-03-05 | $1.56 | — | — | — |
| 2025-12-04 | $1.51 | — | — | — |
| 2025-09-04 | $1.51 | — | — | — |
| 2025-06-03 | $1.51 | — | — | — |
| 2025-03-05 | $1.51 | — | — | — |
| 2024-12-04 | $1.40 | — | — | — |
| 2024-09-04 | $1.40 | — | — | — |
| 2024-06-04 | $1.40 | — | — | — |
| 2024-03-05 | $1.40 | — | — | — |
| 2023-12-05 | $1.23 | — | — | — |
| 2023-09-05 | $1.23 | — | — | — |
| 2023-06-06 | $1.23 | — | — | — |
| 2023-03-07 | $1.23 | — | — | — |
| 2022-12-05 | $1.12 | — | — | — |
| 2022-09-06 | $1.12 | — | — | — |
| 2022-06-07 | $1.12 | — | — | — |
| 2022-03-08 | $1.12 | — | — | — |
| 2021-12-06 | $1.00 | — | — | — |
| 2021-09-07 | $1.00 | — | — | — |
Deep Analysis
Narrative Economics
market-narrative step).
AI Lens 4th lens · how AI reaches this business · 5-yr
2026-08-11Admin/SG&A is the only spend bucket Cigna keeps when it shrinks (medical spend is largely pass-through or MLR-constrained), and AI attacks exactly that: claims adjudication, prior-auth intake, member and pharmacist call handling, Accredo patient support, and Evernorth's clinical-review labor.
Provider-side AI industrialises documentation, coding intensity and denial appeals faster than payer-side AI can adjudicate, pushing medical loss ratios up — while litigation and state rules over algorithmic denials (Cigna's own bulk-review suits) cap how aggressively Cigna can automate the offsetting side.
Whether AI net lowers or raises medical cost trend for Cigna specifically; the observable is Cigna Healthcare MLR versus pricing trend across two to three renewal cycles alongside approval/appeal-overturn rates.
Manufacturer rebate scale from ~$200B+ of drug spend, contracted retail and specialty pharmacy networks, limited-distribution specialty drug access at Accredo, state insurance licences, and employer/benefit-consultant distribution — none of which get cheaper because software does.
AI Lens thesis
Cigna is two different AI stories bolted together. Evernorth is a logistics-plus-negotiation machine where AI compresses fulfilment, clinical review and service labour while the monetised unit (scripts, specialty dispenses, rebate spread) is physically and contractually anchored — and AI-accelerated drug discovery expands the high-cost specialty pipeline that Accredo is built to distribute, a volume tailwind. Cigna Healthcare is where AI creates risk: the value of the product is bearing and pricing medical risk, and the cost side is now contested by counterparties who also have cheap intelligence, plus regulators hostile to automated denial. Admin savings are retainable and probably 100-200bps of an operating margin that has already fallen from 4.6% to 3.3%; but AI does not touch drug prices, utilisation demographics, or the political economy of PBM spread — the actual sources of the current squeeze. Net: a real but second-order cost tailwind sitting on top of a structure AI mostly leaves alone.
What the market may be underestimating
Upside AI-driven biotech productivity multiplies approved specialty and cell/gene therapies — each one flows through Accredo and CuraScript at fee-per-dispense economics, so Evernorth is a levered beneficiary of the AI drug-discovery boom that the market attributes only to biotech names.
Downside Automated appeal and coding tools sold to every physician practice turn utilisation management from a labour-constrained filter into a losing arms race, and any adverse ruling on algorithmic review forces human-in-the-loop everywhere — raising admin cost precisely where the AI savings were supposed to come from.
Outcome range spread 38
Claude Reading
Starting with the raw tape: revenue growth is real but the composition is suspect. 2024→2025 revenue jumped from $247B to $275B (+11%), and Q1 2026 hit $68.5B (+4.6% YoY from $65.5B). But gross margin collapsed from 26.1% in 2024 ($64.6B/$247B) to 21.8% in 2025 ($59.9B/$275B) — that's 430bps of gross erosion on a business that supposedly has "pricing power." Operating income was flat ($9.4B → $9.2B) despite $28B of incremental revenue, meaning incremental operating margin was negative. Net income of $5.96B in 2025 is up from $3.43B in 2024, but 2023 already printed $5.16B — so the "73.5% recent earnings YoY" is a bounce off a depressed 2024 (which included the Medicare Advantage divestiture charges), not a step-function up. And FCF CAGR of -9.9% while revenue CAGR is +18.7% is the tell: this is scale without conversion.
The synthesis screams undervalued at $474 fair value vs $272 (+74%), and the DCF math on 12x P/E with $9.6B OCF is superficially compelling. I dissent from the magnitude but not the direction. The pre-flight is right that this is a multi-segment narrative — Evernorth is ~80% of revenue but a small fraction of segment earnings, and pricing the whole entity at insurance multiples ignores the PBM optionality. But the market-forces read is closer to right than the synthesis: the gross margin compression from 26% to 22% in a single year is not "cyclical MLR noise," it's structural mix shift toward lower-margin Evernorth pharmacy revenue plus genuine PBM spread compression. The $474 fair value assumes margins normalize — they may not. UNH trades at 20x not because the market is dumb about Cigna, but because UNH has Optum growing double-digits with expanding margins while Evernorth is growing revenue by adding low-margin scripts.
The contrarian read the models under-weight: debt shown as $592M is almost certainly a data error — Cigna carried ~$30B+ in long-term debt post-Express Scripts, and current ratio of 0.85 with $7.7B cash confirms the balance sheet is not actually pristine. Debt/equity of 0.014 is nonsense; someone truncated a line item. That matters because EV/EBITDA of 5.5x is understated — real EV/EBITDA is probably 7-8x, which is still cheap but not screaming. Insider activity is exercise-and-sell mechanics, not conviction selling, but there's zero insider buying at a "43% discount to intrinsic," which any rational insider should be doing if the DCF were right. That silence is louder than the sales. Regulatory overhang is real: FTC PBM report, bipartisan legislation, and the 2026 Medicare drug price negotiation phase-in all hit Evernorth's rebate economics directly, and none of the models properly discount cash flows for a 20-30% probability of PBM structural reform.
GPT Reading
Cigna looks cheap on the surface, but the raw numbers argue for a far more ordinary conclusion than the heroic undervaluation models do. Revenue has scaled fast, from $195.3B in 2023 to $247.1B in 2024 and $274.9B in 2025, with Q1 2026 still up 4.6% year over year to $68.5B from $65.5B. That is real top-line momentum. The problem is that almost none of that growth is dropping through. Operating income was $8.54B in 2023, $9.42B in 2024, and then actually slipped to $9.20B in 2025 despite nearly $28B of incremental revenue. Net margin in 2025 was just 2.2%, operating margin 3.35%, and Q1 2026 net margin only 2.4%. This is a giant, efficient pass-through machine, not a compounding margin story. When a company adds 41% revenue in two years but operating profit barely moves, the right multiple is constrained.
The balance sheet is the cleanest part of the story and a genuine support. With just $592M of debt against $7.68B of cash and $41.9B of equity, Cigna is in no financial stress; the 0.014 debt-to-equity figure is exceptionally conservative for a company of this size. Cash generation is also solid enough, with $9.6B of operating cash flow in 2025 against $5.96B of net income, and the dividend is modest at a 2.3% yield with a 27% payout ratio. ROE of 14.2% and ROIC of 21.4% are good numbers. But that’s exactly why I don’t buy the “$475 stock” framing. A business with 2%-3% net margins, sub-1 current ratio, and no visible operating leverage does not deserve to be valued as if high returns on capital will seamlessly convert into much higher equity value. At 12.3x earnings, 1.75x book, 0.27x sales, and 5.5x EV/EBITDA, the market is assigning a low but not irrational multiple to a low-margin healthcare intermediary facing policy risk on both the insurance and PBM sides.
The biggest tell in the numbers is the quality of growth versus quality of earnings. Gross profit was $61.5B in 2023, rose to $64.6B in 2024, then fell to $59.9B in 2025 even as revenue jumped another 11%. That means gross margin compressed from roughly 31.5% in 2023 to 26.1% in 2024 to 21.8% in 2025. Even allowing for accounting mix effects, that is not what an underappreciated platform usually looks like. Q1 2026 net income improved from $1.32B to $1.65B, but on a revenue base near $70B, that still only gets you to a thin margin business where relatively small pricing or utilization shifts matter a lot. The rule-based “mature earner” tag is right; the valuation synthesis is too generous because it seems to extrapolate stability from scale while underweighting how little room these margins leave for error.
The best case against my caution is straightforward: Cigna is producing nearly $6B of annual net income, over $9.5B of operating cash flow, carries net cash, and trades at only about 0.24x EV/revenue. If margins merely hold, the current $73.6B market cap can look plainly cheap, especially relative to many lower-quality large caps. The Q1 2026 earnings increase of about 25% year over year also suggests 2024 may have been the trough year for profitability, and if that continues, a 12x P/E could rerate toward the mid-teens. I take that seriously. But I weigh it differently because the multiyear pattern is one of revenue expansion without durable operating leverage, not temporary earnings dislocation before a snapback. Also, the insider tape is not a bullish tell: while much of it is option exercise-related and therefore not a smoking gun, what little discretionary signal exists leans toward monetization, not accumulation.
What would change my mind is evidence that the business can convert growth into steadier profitability rather than just bigger volume. If 2026 can show revenue above $285B with operating income clearly above the 2024 peak—say at least $10B—and net income moving sustainably toward $6.5B-$7.0B, then the current price would start to look too low. Likewise, if quarterly net margins can hold closer to 2.7%-3.0% instead of oscillating around 2%, I would get more constructive. On the other hand, if revenue keeps growing high single digits while operating income stays flat around $9B, then the stock is not cheap at $272; it is correctly valued as a large, politically exposed, low-margin processor.
Grok Reading
The numbers tell a story of a cash-generating machine the market has decided to hate. Cigna printed $274.9B in 2025 revenue, up 11% from $247.1B, with a five-year revenue CAGR of roughly 19% as the Evernorth PBM engine scaled. Net income recovered to $5.96B from a depressed $3.43B the prior year, and Q1 2026 already shows $1.65B of NI on $68.5B of revenue at a 2.4% margin—better than the 2.0% year-ago quarter. Operating cash flow of $9.6B against a $73.6B market cap, a net-cash balance sheet ($7.7B cash, only $592M debt, D/E of 0.014), 14.2% ROE and 21.4% ROIC is not the profile of a broken franchise. At 12.3x earnings, 0.27x sales, and 5.5x EV/EBITDA, the stock sits at a deep discount to both its own cash generation and to UnitedHealth’s multiple. The market is clearly capitalizing permanent impairment of the PBM economics; the raw earnings power and fortress balance sheet argue that impairment is over-discounted at $272.
What the bulls miss—and what keeps me from pounding the table—is the quality of that earnings recovery. Gross profit fell from $64.6B to $59.9B in 2025 even as revenue climbed $28B; that is real margin compression, not noise. Operating income actually declined slightly ($9.42B to $9.20B), so the NI jump is coming from below the operating line. Free-cash-flow CAGR is negative 9.9%, and the briefing simply blanks FCF and capex for the latest year—an uncomfortable omission when OCF is the bull case’s anchor. Recent revenue growth is decelerating, and the multi-segment structure (insurance MLRs rising while PBM faces transparency mandates and litigation) means the 3.3% operating margin has little room for error. A 2.3% dividend yield with a 27% payout is fine but not a reason to own the equity if the earnings base is structurally softer than the 2025 headline implies.
The valuation synthesis’s $474 fair value (+74%) is too aggressive given that gross-margin trajectory and the regulatory optionality still outstanding. I do not need the stock to be worth $474 to call it cheap; I need it to be worth meaningfully more than $272 on normalized mid-cycle earnings, and at roughly 12x a recovering but still-compressed earnings base with net cash, that bar is cleared. The prior models split 50/50 for a reason: the PBM threat is priced, possibly twice, but the gross-profit collapse and FCF deterioration are not illusions. I weigh the balance-sheet optionality and the absolute multiple more heavily than the narrative of secular squeeze, because a company this levered to cash with almost no financial leverage can buy back stock, wait out the regulatory cycle, and still compound. The market’s fallen-angel framing assumes the earnings power erodes from here; the Q1 sequential improvement and the sheer scale of Evernorth argue erosion is already in the number.
The bear case I respect most cites exactly those declining gross dollars, the missing FCF bridge, employer leakage risk to disintermediators, and the non-zero probability that Congress or CMS permanently rewrites PBM spread economics. Those are real. I discount them relative to price because at 5.5x EV/EBITDA and a sub-1.0 current ratio that still sits on $7.7B of cash, a large portion of that bear scenario is already capitalized. What would flip me is concrete: two more quarters of gross margin failing to stabilize (or MLR spiking through guidance), a confirmed structural cut to Evernorth take-rate from legislation, or OCF rolling over below $8B annualized. Conversely, gross profit re-expanding while revenue grows mid-single digits, or a clean capital-return step-up funded by restored FCF, would push conviction higher and the fair-value gap more actionable.
Big-3 Panel — where each AI stands
Advanced Analysis Forensic deep-dive · separate lenses
Cigna throws off substantial cash: $9.60B FCF in the trailing year on $274.9B revenue, with OCF/NI of 2.31x and accruals of -3.7% of assets - clean earnings-quality signals (Beneish M -2.16). Net cash of $8.14B and $8.73B in liquid cash mean the business easily self-funds. Diluted share count has fallen from 341.0M (2021) to 268.6M (2025), a -5.8% CAGR, meaningfully concentrating per-share economics.
Verify before trusting this (6)
- 10-K segment margin bridge: how much of GM compression is Evernorth/PBM mix vs true underwriting deterioration
- Medical Loss Ratio trend in the Cigna Healthcare segment for 2024-2025
- Debt maturity schedule and total debt vs EBITDA given grey-zone Z-score
- Buyback authorization remaining and pace vs FCF
- Customer/PBM client concentration (e.g., major health plan contracts up for renewal)
- Litigation and regulatory exposure re: PBM pricing practices
The e2e composite pegs fair value at $479.51 (signal-adj $474.24) implying 74% upside, but that number leans heavily on an anchored-PE of $579 that assumes multiple re-rating back to historical norms - which is exactly what a market worried about PBM regulation and MLR creep is refusing to grant. The EPV floor of $379.91 is more defensible: it capitalizes current earnings power without heroic growth, and even that implies ~39% upside from $272.63. Splitting the difference and haircutting for the legitimate structural concerns (gross margin down ~11pts in four years, PBM legislative overhang, integrated model unproven at scale), a deserved value of roughly $350-400 feels honest.
Verify before trusting this (4)
- MLR trend in next 2 quarters and 2025 guide
- PBM legislative/litigation exposure quantified in 10-Q risk disclosures
- Segment margin trajectory - is Evernorth stabilizing or still compressing
- Buyback pace and remaining authorization
Cigna sits in a strange sentiment pocket: the tape is mildly risk-on (VIX 15.5, S&P near highs) but with a beta of 0.32 that tailwind barely reaches this name. What actually presses on CI is the managed-care narrative - rising MLRs, PBM legal and political risk, government-program margin fear - a moderate-intensity, moderate-durability fallen-angel story that keeps the multiple compressed regardless of earnings. Recent headlines ('still looks cheap', 'raised 2026 outlook', analysts 'moderately optimistic') are constructive but read as value-trap defenses rather than a story flip. Momentum is neutral and decelerating (11.2% recent vs 18.7% long-term), which fits a name where buyers show up on fundamentals and then get worn down by the overhang. Net: no dominant force either way. The macro backdrop (10y 4.65%, market PE 26) is a mild headwind for equities generally but low-beta defensive healthcare names are relatively insulated, so it neither rescues nor crushes CI. The push and pull roughly cancel, with a slight lean to headwind because the narrative is the louder voice.
Verify before trusting this (4)
- Any DOJ/FTC or congressional action on PBM pricing that would harden the bear narrative
- MLR trend in next quarter's print - a stabilization would be the crack that flips the story
- Whether sell-side target revisions turn from moderate to broadly positive
- Managed-care sector rotation signals (UNH, ELV, HUM tape) - group re-rating would drag CI with it
Cigna is two different AI stories bolted together. Evernorth is a logistics-plus-negotiation machine where AI compresses fulfilment, clinical review and service labour while the monetised unit (scripts, specialty dispenses, rebate spread) is physically and contractually anchored — and AI-accelerated drug discovery expands the high-cost specialty pipeline that Accredo is built to distribute, a volume tailwind. Cigna Healthcare is where AI creates risk: the value of the product is bearing and pricing medical risk, and the cost side is now contested by counterparties who also have cheap intelligence, plus regulators hostile to automated denial. Admin savings are retainable and probably 100-200bps of an operating margin that has already fallen from 4.6% to 3.3%; but AI does not touch drug prices, utilisation demographics, or the political economy of PBM spread — the actual sources of the current squeeze. Net: a real but second-order cost tailwind sitting on top of a structure AI mostly leaves alone.
None surfaced.
Verify before trusting this (8)
- SG&A ratio vs prior year
- Operating margin inflection off 3.3%
- Service headcount disclosures
- Self-funded employers adding in-house UM
- Regulatory action on algorithmic denials
- Fiduciary litigation against plan sponsors
- Limited-distribution drug wins at Accredo
- Manufacturer contract renewals
This lens hasn't been run for this ticker yet.
Prediction unavailable. valuation-synthesis has no result for CI — the prediction needs its fair-value anchors.