Key Stats for Humana Stock
- Past-Week Performance: -5%
- 52-Week Range: $170 to $315
- Current Price: $187
What Happened to Humana Stock?
Humana (HUM) fell 5% last week, hovering near its 52-week low of $170, extending a brutal slide that has now erased more than 46% of the stock’s value from its 52-week high of $315..
Humana’s Q4 2025 earnings report delivered a gut punch to investors, with 2026 adjusted EPS guidance of at least $9.00 coming in dramatically below Wall Street’s estimate of $11.92, sending shares down another 2.6% to $176.68 on February 12.
The miss was not operational but structural, as lower Medicare Advantage star ratings will directly cut government bonus payments to Humana, creating a $3.5 billion profit headwind in 2026 alone according to CFO Celeste Mellet.
Humana is no longer being debated as a near-term earnings story, with both Guggenheim Securities and Mizuho framing the 2026 numbers as deliberately conservative stepping stones toward what Guggenheim called a “hockey stick-like recovery in 2028.”
Adding a further layer of caution, Soros Fund Management cut its Humana stake by 15.7% to 50,530 shares as of December 31, 2025, signaling that at least one major institutional investor is unwilling to wait for the 2028 recovery thesis to play out.
On the brighter side, CenterWell completed its acquisition of MaxHealth on February 14, adding 54 primary care clinics and 120,000 patients in Florida, a quiet but meaningful bet on long-term value-based care growth beyond the Medicare Advantage storm.
Where is the Humana Stock Headed?
The 5% drop last week is not just a reaction to one bad guidance print, it is the market continuing to reprice Humana as a company that will not see meaningful earnings recovery until 2028 at the earliest.
The 2026 numbers are genuinely difficult to look past, with EPS forecast to collapse 43.2% to $9.74, EBITDA margins shrinking to just 1.7%, and net income margins compressing to 0.7%, the lowest level in at least five years.
Despite the pain, revenue tells a different story, with 2026 sales forecast to grow 22.1% to $158.4B, suggesting the membership growth engine is still running even as margins get crushed by the Medicare star ratings headwind.
Wall Street is deeply divided, with a mean price target of $226.75 across 24 analysts representing 21.2% upside from $187.12, but the breakdown of 6 Buys, 2 Outperforms, 17 Holds, and 2 Sells signals that conviction is extremely low right now.
The target spread is one of the widest in the healthcare sector, with the high at $344 and the low at $146, a $198 gap that reflects genuine uncertainty about whether Humana’s 2028 recovery thesis actually materializes or continues to get pushed further out.
TIKR’s valuation model makes the contrarian case with striking force, projecting a mid-case target of $687.38 by December 2030, representing a staggering 267.3% total return from current levels at an annualized IRR of 30.6% per year.
To contextualize that number, even the model’s low-case scenario projects a stock price of $547 and a 192.1% total return, suggesting that if Humana executes on its 2028 recovery plan, the downside from here is far more protected than the current sentiment implies.
The risk is not just the $3.5B Medicare star ratings headwind in 2026, but the possibility that the Trump administration’s proposed 0.09% Medicare Advantage rate increase for 2027 gets finalized as-is, compounding margin pressure for another year beyond 2026.
At $187, Humana looks deeply undervalued for investors with a multi-year horizon, but it is firmly a wait-and-see story in the near term until there is concrete evidence that 2027 rate negotiations and star ratings begin moving in the company’s favor.
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