Cantor downgrades CVS Health to Neutral, sees ‘too many unknowns’

As previously reported, Cantor Fitzgerald downgraded CVS Health to Neutral from Overweight with a price target of $58, down from $87. While the firm believes the Medicare Advantage margin risk in 2024 and 2025 was “known,” new today was a much larger scale of 2024 margin headwinds and “a turnaround timeline 2x as long as we were expecting,” says the analyst, who feels “there are still too many unknowns.” Given the view that clarity likely won’t come until Q3 on the cost trend and market exit side, and January on the Medicare Advantage enrollment side, the firm calls it “prudent to move the rating to Neutral as we believe the stock will struggle to find incremental investors until these events pass.”