UnitedHealth (UNH) stock has been through a rough period in 2025, with the health insurance company’s shares down 45.18% year-to-date, and 47.71% over the last 52 weeks. This may have some traders wondering if the stock is worth buying after this fall.
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UnitedHealth has been the center of controversy over the last few months. It all started with the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Suspect Luigi Mangione has been charged in the killing.
Since then, UnitedHealth has continued to attract negative news coverage. That includes the changing of its CEO, Medicare fraud allegations, withdrawn fiscal guidance, and other issues. This spurred an apology to investors from new CEO Stephen Hemsley, who returned to the role after Andrew Witty stepped down.
Analysts Lose Confidence in UNH Stock
With all of these issues mounting, analysts reevaluated UnitedHealth stock over the last week. While only a couple were willing to downgrade UNH shares, several hit the company with price target reductions. That includes several top analysts, such as Oppenheimer’s Michael Wiederhorn cutting the firm’s price target for UNH stock from $600 to $400.
In a note to clients, Wiederhorn said, “UNH is clearly struggling with cost trend, but is also taking a conservative posture given the change in CEO.” He also noted that “the outlook for 2025 remains unclear” but that UnitedHealth should be able to recapture margins in 2026. This resulted in the immediate price cut, but long-term Outperform rating for UNH stock.
Is UNH Stock a Buy, Hold, or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, the analysts’ consensus rating for UnitedHealth is Strong Buy, based on 21 Buy and five Hold ratings over the last three months. With that comes an average UNH stock price target of $450.09, representing a potential 66.12% upside for the shares.
