UnitedHealth Group has the highest worth per share of any firm on the Dow Jones Industrial Average and it is the tenth heaviest-weighted inventory on the S&P 500.

In reality, not solely is UnitedHealth the biggest health-care conglomerate in the United States primarily based on market cap and income, it is even bigger than JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest financial institution.

And it’s a Wall Street darling, with specialists optimistic about the firm’s future: 22 of 25 analysts at present label it a purchase.

“If I needed to decide one inventory, just one inventory to purchase, I’d purchase United[Health],” mentioned Ana Gupte, principal at AG Health Advisors.

UnitedHealth “has had superior inventory efficiency over all people else for 2 causes,” mentioned Lance Wilkes, managing director and senior analysis analyst at Bernstein Research. “One can be strategic imaginative and prescient and the different is strategic capital administration.”

UnitedHealth has elevated its annual income since 2012 by extra than $100 billion, when adjusted for inflation. It achieved this by participating in a singular acquisition technique. It began with smaller offers which have grown whereas lots of UnitedHealth’s rivals resembling Aetna and Humana or Anthem and Cigna tried to dealer a lot bigger ones, solely to be stopped by regulators.

Conversely, UnitedHealth leaned right into a vertical-integration technique, shopping for up smaller corporations and constructing them into its rising health-care enterprise.

UnitedHealth’s dimension makes it “comparatively proof against financial cycles” as a consequence of the firm’s large variety, Gupte mentioned. “It makes it very engaging from an financial cycle and a macro surroundings perspective.”

Until not too long ago, its acquisition technique allowed it to develop with out catching an excessive amount of scrutiny from regulators. But in January 2021, UnitedHealth and Change Healthcare introduced an almost $8 billion all-cash deal that was challenged by the Department of Justice as a consequence of antitrust considerations.

Health-care corporations “have gotten increasingly more [like] utilities,” Wilkes mentioned. “Consequently, I feel they will have very massive market shares as a result of … you would not need redundant companies via the system.”

“I feel at this level you we might take into account UnitedHealth Group simply form of like … core well being infrastructure at this level in America,” mentioned Matt Stoller, director of analysis at the American Economic Liberties Project and writer of “Goliath: The Hundred Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy.” “It’s too massive to handle.”

“UnitedHealth Group is dedicated to enhancing the well being system for everybody, advancing evidence-based apply and aligning incentives throughout the system to make sure individuals get the proper care at the proper time in the proper place,” UnitedHealth Group advised CNBC.

“Because we serve individuals all through each facet of the well being system, we’ve a singular skill to determine alternatives to raised combine care and advantages, develop options and deploy them at scale to enhance entry, decrease prices and make the expertise higher for sufferers and suppliers,” it mentioned.

Watch the video above to learn the way UnitedHealth Group grew so massive and what meaning for the U.S. health-care system.