UPDATED: Nov. 6 at 11:50 a.m. ET
Humana offered a look at early results from Medicare’s annual enrollment period during its earnings call on Friday morning.
CEO Jim Rechtin told investors that based on signups so far, the insurer expects its membership to grow yet again in 2027. This includes both strong performance in recapturing members who were impacted by the company’s market exits as well as new sales that are “ahead of plan.”
“So far, AEP performance is ahead of our initial expectations,” Rechtin said. “While it remains very early in AEP, we currently anticipate that our membership will be up for 2027.”
Humana saw a significant enrollment increase for 2026, which has impacted the acuity of its membership and led to an uptick in its medical loss ratio. The company’s 2026 star ratings performance has also proven a drag on the performance this year.
However, Humana’s performance in the latest round of star ratings made for a significant boon, with it earning “the highest ratings Humana has ever achieved,” per Rechtin.
The team has also been hard at work in identifying health risks and pushing to better outcomes, he said. For example, 534,000 more members completed an annual preventative care visit. In addition, about 28,000 members received an overdue mammogram, which found 600 previously unidentified cases of breast cancer.
With these results, Rechtin said that the company expects a one-time tailwind in 2028 that it can use to continue investing in improvements that support stars performance.
He also said Humana expects to return some of that value to shareholders as “we do not believe we can productively invest the full tailwind.”
“Once we have more information on 2028, which includes competitive dynamics, membership and product dynamics, and regulatory environment, we will quantify the level of and the expected use of the tailwind,” Rechtin said. “We will size how much we will invest, and we will explain roughly how much we will pass through to earnings.”
PUBLISHED: Nov. 6 at 7:44 a.m. ET
Humana beat the Street for both earnings and revenue in the third quarter.
The company reported $162 million in profit and $41.2 billion in revenue for Q3, both of which surpassed analysts’ predictions, per Zacks Investment Research. By comparison, Humana posted $195 million in profit and $32.6 billion in revenue for the third quarter of 2025.
Across the first three quarters of the year, the company has earned $2 billion in profit and brought in $121.7 billion in revenue. Revenue is up significantly year-over-year, as the company reported $97.1 billion in revenue across the first nine months of 2025.
Earnings are on par with the previous year, as the company also had $2 billion in profit through three quarters in 2025.
“Humana is delivering positive results for our members, our patients and their health,” said Humana CEO Jim Rechtin in the press release. “We are also increasingly driving financial and operating performance toward being ‘ahead’ of our plan.”
Humana posted a medical loss ratio of 93.9% in the quarter, up from a 91.1% ratio in Q3 2025. MLR through three quarters is also elevated compared to 2025, at 91.5% compared to 89.93%.
The insurer attributed this increase in part to its significant jump in Medicare enrollment for this year, as those newer members tend to be higher acuity. It also said the ratio was impacted by its 2026 star ratings performance, which was a consistent headwind.
The company’s pricing strategy for 2026 and planned footprint contraction both helped to dull the impact of those headwinds, Humana said.
Revenues at Humana’s core insurance business were $39.1 billion, up from $31.2 billion, per the report. Much of that revenue growth was driven by its membership increases, though the star ratings scores did offset that to some degree.
At CenterWell, revenues were $7.2 billion, growing from $5.9 billion. The company said it saw higher revenue across its CenterWell units that was linked to membership growth in 2026.
On the back of the performance, Humana boosted its guidance to $9.50 in earnings per share for the year. It expects at least $160 billion in revenue for 2026.