Key Stats for DaVita Stock
- Past-Week Performance: -0.03%
- 52-Week Range: $101 to $159.4
- Current Price: $150.7
What Happened?
For a dialysis company running 3,200 U.S. and international kidney care clinics, DaVita‘s first profitable year in its value-based care unit, its strongest guidance beat in recent memory, and a 29% single-week stock surge off a 52-week low of $101.00 to a current $150.72 together signal a recovery thesis that is no longer speculative.
On February 2, Barclays raised its price target on DVA to $158 from $143 after the company reported Q4 adjusted earnings per share of $3.40 against the IBES estimate of $3.16, with quarterly revenue of $3.62 billion beating the $3.497 billion consensus by roughly $120 million.
DaVita’s 2026 adjusted EPS guidance midpoint of $14.30 exceeds the pre-earnings analyst consensus of $12.65 by 13%, driven by the elimination of a $45 million revenue-per-treatment headwind from the April 2025 ransomware attack, higher reimbursement rates, and the first profitable year in its Integrated Kidney Care unit, which manages risk-based contracts covering roughly $5.6 billion in annual patient spending.
DaVita also announced on February 2 a $200 million minority investment in Elara Caring, a national home-based health services provider, partnering alongside Ares Private Equity to build a kidney-specific home care model targeting reduced hospitalizations and missed treatments for the roughly one quarter of DaVita’s patients who use home health.
CFO Joel Ackerman stated on the Q4 2025 earnings call that “with our current capital allocation program and removing the headwinds from our investment in Mozarc, we see an opportunity to exceed our long-term adjusted EPS guidance of 8% to 14%,” directly tying the guidance raise to the elimination of losses from Mozarc, a dialysis technology venture whose cumulative losses have now been fully recognized.
DaVita’s three-year roadmap targets 3% to 7% adjusted operating income growth annually, a return to at least 2% treatment volume growth by approximately 2029 through GLP-1 adoption among existing patients, medium cutoff dialyzer deployment, and flu vaccination recovery from the current 80% rate back above 90%, all underpinned by $1.0 billion to $1.25 billion in annual free cash flow and a buyback program that retired nearly 13 million shares for approximately $1.8 billion in 2025.
Wall Street’s Take on DVA Stock
The Q4 earnings beat and 2026 guidance reset directly justify TIKR’s projection of 30.6% normalized EPS growth this year, as the $45 million ransomware drag on revenue per treatment disappears and share count continues shrinking from the $1.8 billion buyback program executed in 2025.
TIKR’s consensus projects normalized EPS rising from $10.78 in 2025 to $14.08 in 2026 and $16.33 in 2027, supported by flat-to-growing U.S. dialysis margins, Integrated Kidney Care’s (IKC) first profitable year generating $22 million in adjusted operating income, and the elimination of losses from Mozarc, a dialysis technology venture that had weighed on the other income line.
Seven of nine analysts covering DVA carry Hold ratings, with one Buy and one Outperform, yet the mean price target of $151.71 implies just 0.7% upside from the current $150.72, a consensus that was set before the 33% EPS guidance midpoint landed and which has not yet fully digested the recovery’s underlying mechanics.
The spread between the $126.00 analyst low target and the $190.00 high target reflects genuine uncertainty about two variables already introduced in the earnings call: the $40 million ACA premium tax credit headwind, which CFO Joel Ackerman said the Q1 earnings call will clarify, and the pace of treatment volume recovery toward the 2% long-term target.
What Does the Valuation Model Say?
TIKR’s mid-case target of $236.31 implies 56.8% total return over 4.8 years at a 9.8% annualized IRR, anchored by a 3.6% revenue CAGR and 11.9% EPS CAGR through 2030, assumptions that management’s own $13.60 to $15.00 EPS guidance range and $1.0 billion to $1.25 billion free cash flow guide already validate for the first year of that runway.
The market is pricing DVA as a slow-growth dialysis utility, but TIKR’s model prices in $23.53 of normalized EPS by 2029, a figure the ongoing buyback program makes structurally achievable even without volume recovery.
IKC reaching profitability one year ahead of the 2026 schedule set at the 2021 Capital Markets Day confirms the operational capability behind TIKR’s projection, with management guiding an incremental $20 million of IKC operating income growth in 2026 on top of the $22 million base.
Ackerman’s statement at the TD Cowen conference on March 2 that the stock’s decline “was driven by investors” and “our story didn’t change” signals management views the recent trough as a sentiment dislocation, not a fundamental one.
The key risk is the ACA enhanced premium tax credit expiration: if effectuation rates disappoint and the $40 million headwind proves closer to the $70 million guided for 2027, TIKR’s revenue-per-treatment growth assumption of 1% to 2% breaks and the EPS compounding curve compresses.
The Q1 2026 earnings call is the single nearest catalyst to watch, specifically the effectuation rate on ACA exchange patients and the updated revenue-per-treatment trajectory, which Ackerman confirmed will determine whether the $40 million APTC headwind holds or widens.
Should You Invest in DaVita Inc.?
The only way to really know is to look at the numbers yourself. TIKR gives you free access to the same institutional-quality financial data that professional analysts use to answer exactly that question.
Pull up DVA stock and you’ll see years of historical financials, what Wall Street analysts expect for revenue and earnings in the quarters ahead, how valuation multiples have moved over time, and whether price targets are trending up or down.
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