Share count
53Mpeak FY2018
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MOH, Molina Healthcare
Managed Care financial
Molina runs health insurance plans for people covered by government programs, chiefly Medicaid, alongside Medicare and the insurance marketplaces. Its paying customers are state Medicaid agencies and the federal government, which hand it a fixed sum for each enrolled member every month to arrange that member's medical care. Molina keeps the difference between those premiums and what it pays doctors and hospitals for the care its members actually use.
The Medicaid, Medicare, and Marketplace segments represent the government-funded or sponsored programs under which we offer managed healthcare services.
Program integrity initiatives will also be a contributing factor to Marketplace membership reduction.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Revenue · FY2025
$45.4B
+11.7% YoY · 19% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average
Revenue $10.8B −3.1% vs yr-ago qtr
Operating margin 0.8% yr-ago 3.9%
Net income $14M yr-ago $298M
Net margin 0.1% yr-ago 2.7%
The business in brief
read the 10-K →What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.
- What moves the needle
- The whole business is the spread between premiums collected and medical claims paid, so the test is underwriting discipline: whether Molina prices and manages care so the cost of treating its members stays under the fixed sums the government hands it. Because the customer is the government, contracts get re-bid and the rate is set by someone else, so watch whether Molina can win and hold state contracts without surrendering that spread, and weigh the filing's own stress on data-privacy compliance and on the covenants tied to its debt. A franchise here would show up as steady margins across renewal cycles, not as a brand name; the bad case is a single agency walking away, or a year when claims run past a rate already locked in. The figures are in the record below.
- Is it a good business?
- The split between premiums and medical costs is not cleanly tagged in the filings. That leaves a thin operating margin, a median of about 3.9%, the sign of a volume-and-cost-control business rather than a high-margin one, though turns that sliver over fast enough to earn roughly 26% on equity. Whether membership keeps growing and medical costs stay below premiums, especially as the Medicare Advantage and Medicaid mix shifts, is what the 10-K decides, not an earnings multiple.
Drafted from the company's filings and reviewed by hand; every number is shown in full in the sections below.
The record
Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.
The record, 2016–2025
realized figures from each filing · older years to the left| 2016’16 | 2017’17 | 2018’18 | 2019’19 | 2020’20 | 2021’21 | 2022’22 | 2023’23 | 2024’24 | 2025’25 | TTMTTMMar 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income statement | |||||||||||
| $17.8B | $19.9B | $18.9B | $16.8B | $19.4B | $27.8B | $32.0B | $34.1B | $40.6B | $45.4B | $45.1B | RevenueRevenue |
| $16.4B | $18.9B | $17.6B | $16.2B | $18.3B | $26.9B | $30.9B | $32.5B | $38.6B | $43.1B | $42.6B | Premiums earnedPremiums |
| 1.7% | −2.8% | 6.0% | 6.2% | 5.6% | 3.7% | 3.7% | 4.6% | 4.2% | 1.7% | 1.0% | Operating marginOp. mgn |
| $52M | ($512M) | $707M | $737M | $673M | $659M | $792M | $1.1B | $1.2B | $472M | $188M | Net incomeNet inc. |
| — | — | 29% | 24% | 30% | 25% | 25% | 25% | 26% | 20% | 18% | Effective tax rateTax rate |
| Cash flow & returns | |||||||||||
| 3% | -38% | 43% | 38% | 32% | 25% | 27% | 26% | 26% | 12% | 5% | Return on equityROE |
| 3% | −38% | 43% | 38% | 32% | 25% | 27% | 26% | 26% | 12% | 5% | Retained to equityRetained/eq |
| Balance sheet | |||||||||||
| $7.4B | $8.5B | $7.2B | $6.8B | $9.5B | $12.2B | $12.3B | $14.9B | $15.6B | $15.6B | $16.4B | Total assetsAssets |
| $1.6B | $1.3B | $1.6B | $2.0B | $2.1B | $2.6B | $3.0B | $4.2B | $4.5B | $4.1B | $4.1B | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| Per share | |||||||||||
| 56.2M | 56.4M | 66.6M | 64.2M | 59.9M | 58.6M | 58.5M | 58.1M | 57.7M | 52.9M | 51.0M | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| $316.41 | $352.54 | $283.63 | $262.13 | $324.26 | $473.91 | $546.56 | $586.44 | $704.51 | $858.71 | $883.82 | Revenue / shareRev/sh |
| $0.93 | $-9.08 | $10.62 | $11.48 | $11.24 | $11.25 | $13.54 | $18.78 | $20.43 | $8.92 | $3.69 | EPS (diluted)EPS |
| $29.34 | $23.71 | $24.73 | $30.53 | $34.99 | $44.88 | $50.67 | $72.55 | $77.92 | $76.92 | $80.00 | Book value / shareBVPS |
Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
| 9-yr | 5-yr | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue / share | +11.7%/yr | +21.5%/yr |
| EPS | +28.6%/yr | −4.5%/yr |
| Capital spending / share | −5.3%/yr | +9.1%/yr |
| Book value / share | +11.3%/yr | +17.1%/yr |
The record, charted
FY2016–2025Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.
Revenue
$45.4Blow FY2019
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
FY2025 10-K · source on SEC EDGAR →
Material weakness in financial controls
“We have identified material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting in the past, which have subsequently been remediated.”
The figures below are only as sound as the controls that produced them. read the note →
Is it a good business?
- Not enough dataIndustry peers: median 85%
In the filing’s words The filing discloses a material weakness in its financial controls — the reported numbers here, and the record built on them, are only as reliable as the controls that produced them.
What this means
Premiums or medical claims weren't cleanly tagged in the filing data.
- Operating margin 1.7%Very thin (<2%)Operating income $781M ÷ revenue $45.4BIndustry peers: median 4%
What this means
Health plans earn a sliver on enormous revenue, so a few points of margin is the norm and the business is really a volume-and-cost-control game. Because the margin is so thin, a small miss on medical costs swings profit hard, which is why membership scale and cost management matter more than price.
- Return on equity 12%SolidNet income $472M ÷ equity $4.1BIndustry peers: median 13%
What this means
The thin margin turns over fast on a modest capital base, so a plan earning its keep still shows a good return on equity. Durably above the ~10% cost of equity is what compounds value; a year below it usually means medical costs outran premiums.
Does AI threaten the moat?
Low contestabilityThe moat is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded, the kind AI cuts costs within but does not contest.
In its own filing Raised, but not as a competitor
The filing raises AI among its risks, but in other terms (security, regulation, energy or the like), not as a competitor to its product; it frames AI mainly as a capability.
AI is unlikely to contest a moat that is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded; here it reads more as a cost tool than a threat, and the company is using it that way.
Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.
All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.
Current Position
as of the latest quarter, Mar 31, 2026Can the business pay what it owes this year, off the freshest balance sheet: the quality of the assets, the debt actually coming due, and what a low ratio means here.
Current assets$13.3B
- Cash & short-term investments$9.3B
- Receivables$3.4B
- Other current assets$655M
Current liabilities$8.2B
- Accounts payable$1.2B
- Other current liabilities$7.0B
Current ratio1.63×all current assets ÷ what's due · Graham looked for 2×
Quick ratio1.63×stricter: inventory excluded
Cash ratio1.13×strictest: cash alone against what's due
Working capital$5.1Bthe cushion left after near-term bills
Revenue, latest quarter vs. a year ago−3.1%the freshest read on whether the business is still growing
Current ratio, recent quarters1.6× → 1.6×
Deeper floors
Tangible book value$1.9Bequity stripped of goodwill & intangibles
Net current asset value$1.0BGraham's net-net: current assets less all liabilities
Debt incl. operating leases$3.8B$71M of it operating leases
Deferred revenue$401Mcustomer cash collected before delivery; operating float
From the company's latest filing.
Acquisitions & goodwill
from the balance sheet & the 10-year cash-flow recordGoodwill grows only when a company acquires and falls only when it concedes it overpaid. The size of that bet, the cash put into buying rather than building, and how much has already been written off.
Goodwill & intangibles$2.2B14% of all assets; the premium carried on the balance sheet for businesses acquired
Against book equity48%goodwill is this share of book equity; the rest is the company’s own retained and paid-in capital
Cash spent acquiring$1.7Bover 10 years buying other businesses, against $876M of capital spent building
$434M written down across 1 year (2017): goodwill the company has already conceded it overpaid for, charged against earnings. That is roughly 26% of the cash it put into acquisitions over the span. A write-down costs no cash (the cash went out when the deal was signed), but it is management marking its own past judgment to market.
Goodwill, acquired intangibles and equity from the latest balance sheet; acquisition spend and write-downs summed across the 10-year record, from the company's own filings.
Management, ownership & pay
read the proxy →From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid, beside what the business earned for its owners in the same years.
| Fiscal year | Chief executive | Pay, as filed | “Actually paid” | Owner earnings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Joseph Zubretsky | $20.0M | $75.9M | $2.0B |
| 2022 | Joseph Zubretsky | $22.1M | $41.7M | $682M |
| 2023 | Joseph Zubretsky | $21.5M | $25.2M | $1.6B |
| 2024 | Joseph Zubretsky | $21.9M | $15.4M | $544M |
| 2025 | Joseph Zubretsky | $18.3M | −$15.3M | ($636M) |
Both pay figures are the company’s own, from the pay-versus-performance table its proxy statement files. “As filed” is the Summary Compensation Table total: salary, bonus, and equity awards at their value on the day of grant. “Actually paid” is the SEC’s prescribed recalculation, which re-marks those equity awards to what they became as they vested; it can swing far above or below the filed figure in either direction, and negative years occur. Owner earnings are the whole business's, from the record above, for the same fiscal years.
- Insider ownership<1%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
- Stock-based compensation$47M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 0% of revenue, equal to 6% of operating profit. Buffett's oldest accounting fight: this is compensation, compensation is an expense, real whether or not the headline earnings admit it. One trap: the cash-flow statement adds SBC back, so the operating cash, and the owner earnings drawn from it, are flattered by exactly this amount; counted as the cost it is, what an owner keeps is lower.
What an owner would ask, FY2025
read the 10-K →- Which reported numbers are a judgment call?Management names Revenue recognition, Acquisitions as critical estimates
each rests partly on management's judgment; the filing's note sets out the assumptionsverify →
The questions the record and the charts do not answer on their own; each carries the figure and the place to look.
Peers, Managed Care
The same industry, side by side on the medical-loss-ratio lens. Each figure is a through-cycle median, so a peak or trough year can’t distort it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each against.
| Company | Revenue | Medical loss ratio | Op. margin | ROE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UNHUnitedhealth Group Incorporated | $447.6B | 84% | 8.1% | 22% |
| CIThe Cigna Group | $274.9B | 80% | 4.9% | 13% |
| ELVElevance Health Inc. | $199.1B | 87% | 5.3% | 14% |
| CNCCentene Corporation | $194.8B | — | 2.2% | 9% |
| HUMHumana Inc. | $129.7B | 89% | 3.9% | 17% |
| MOHMolina Healthcare | $45.4B | — | 3.9% | 26% |
| OSCROscar Health | $11.7B | 85% | -14.9% | -41% |
| ALHCAlignment Healthcare | $3.9B | — | -3.9% | -69% |
| Group median | — | — | 3.9% | 13% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
reverse-DCFType today's close and see the owner-earnings growth you'd have to believe to justify it, beside what Molina Healthcare has delivered.
$
Through the cycle, Molina Healthcare earns about $1.1B on its 2.5% median owner-earnings margin. This year’s −1.4% margin runs below that; the reported figure may understate a lean year. Normalize, below, values the price on that through-cycle figure rather than the latest year.
Base
—
The assumptions
9.0% = the 4.55% 10-year Treasury (Jul 15, 2026) + 4.45 points of equity premium. The rate you require is yours to set.
Enter a price above to run it.
A dated snapshot of the price you typed, the assumptions you set, and what the page showed for them. A snapshot is never edited after it is saved. Your notebook is yours alone — the commitment states what is stored and what we will never do.
Implied by the price—
Owner-earnings growth, delivered—
Owner-earnings growth, delivered—
Owner-earnings yield—
What a growth belief costs, in multiples
The growth each return requires, at your price
P/E (3-yr earnings ’23–’25)—
P/B—
Graham’s price gate—
Graham capped the multiple at 15×; Buffett and Munger let that rule go: a wonderful business can deserve 50× if the thesis holds. The gate marks the bargain-hunter's floor.
Against a high-grade bond: Graham’s yardstick bond yield%
Prefilled with the 10-year Treasury (4.55%, as of Jul 15, 2026). Edit it for today’s exact figure, or a AAA corporate yield.
Graham measured a stock against the bond you could own instead, the heart of his margin of safety. Enter a price above to weigh the owner-earnings yield against this bond.
Owner-earnings yield—
High-grade bond yield—
Margin over the bond—
Owner earnings $251M on 52M shares outstanding, per the 10-Q cover, as of 2026-04-17; net cash $5.5B. The base is the latest year by default; Normalize values it on the through-cycle median owner-earnings margin (to avoid paying on a peak year). Net of stock comp treats option pay as the expense it is. The dials set the multiple a growth belief justifies; the price, and every dollar on this page, is yours.
Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Molina Healthcare (MOH), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/MOH, data as of 2026-07-09.
Manual order: ← MOD its page in the Manual MORN →
Industry order: ← HUM the Managed Care chapter OSCR →