UnitedHealth's Earnings Beat Just Tested the 13F Sellers

UnitedHealth Group (UNH) reported second-quarter 2026 earnings on July 16 and delivered one of the cleaner beats of this earnings season: adjusted EPS of $6.38 against estimates of $4.91, revenue of roughly $112 billion, and a raised full-year adjusted earnings guide of $19.50–$20.00 per share. Shares jumped more than 4% on the news.

That's an awkward result for some of the most famous names in the InvestorLens investor database — because the latest round of 13F filings showed the smart money heading for the exits just two quarters after piling in.

The round trip: from consensus buy to consensus sell

Rewind to mid-2025. UNH had been hammered by rising medical costs, a DOJ investigation, and a CEO change, and the stock traded at levels not seen in years. The Q2 2025 13Fs revealed a remarkable cluster of buyers: Berkshire Hathaway opened a roughly 5 million share position, David Tepper's Appaloosa boosted its stake by about 1,300% — making UNH its second-largest holding at nearly 12% of the portfolio — and Michael Burry's Scion picked up shares plus call options on 350,000 more.

When multiple elite investors converge on a beaten-down name in the same quarter, that's exactly the kind of signal our overlap tool is built to surface. And for a while, the trade worked.

Then came the Q1 2026 filings, and the picture flipped:

Who sold — and how much

Berkshire Hathaway exited entirely, dumping all 5,039,564 shares — an estimated $1.35 billion sale. Coming from the firm most associated with "our favorite holding period is forever," a one-year round trip is unusual and drew heavy attention.

David Tepper cut Appaloosa's UNH stake by 55% in the same quarter — a sharp reversal from the aggressive 2025 build. Chase Coleman's Tiger Global trimmed roughly 17% of its position too.

Three high-conviction buyers became three sellers within nine months. If you were mirroring these portfolios mechanically, you were whipsawed twice.

Then the quarter that beat everything

Against that backdrop, Q2's numbers landed hard: a 30% EPS beat, revenue ahead of consensus, and management confident enough to raise the full-year outlook. The operational story the sellers seemed to doubt — that UnitedHealth could reprice plans and digest elevated medical costs — showed real progress.

Does that mean the sellers were wrong? Not necessarily, and this is the important part.

Three lessons for 13F readers

First, 13Fs tell you what, not why. Berkshire's exit could reflect a changed thesis on managed care margins, regulatory risk, portfolio reshuffling under Greg Abel (whose Alphabet build-out we covered previously), or simple opportunity cost. The filing doesn't say. A strong quarter doesn't refute a seller whose concern was multi-year — Medicare Advantage rate pressure and DOJ overhang don't resolve in ninety days.

Second, the lag is real. Q1 2026 sales happened between January and March; the public learned of them in mid-May; the earnings beat came in July. Anyone who sold in May because "Buffett sold" acted on positioning that was already months old — and missed a 4%+ single-day pop. This is why we track aggregate fund flows across filers rather than reacting to any single headline exit.

Third, sizing matters more than direction. Tepper didn't exit — he cut a wildly oversized 12% position by half. That reads less like a thesis reversal and more like risk management after a big run. Tiger's 17% trim is barely a signal at all. Treating "reduced" as equivalent to "abandoned" is one of the most common ways 13F data gets misread.

What to watch next

The Q2 2026 13F deadline is August 14, and UNH will be one of the most-watched names in that batch. Did anyone buy back in ahead of the beat? Did the selling continue into the strength of the quarter? Burry's options positions — which don't show direction cleanly in 13F data — add another wrinkle worth tracking.

We'll be mapping the answers across every tracked portfolio when filings drop, alongside the broader positioning picture in our macro consensus dashboard. If Q1 was the quarter the smart money gave up on UnitedHealth, Q2's filings will tell us whether that was discipline — or a mistake the market just exposed.

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Data sourced from public SEC 13F filings. Educational research only — not investment advice.