The Rundown - UnitedHealth Under Investigation for Billing Practices, Amazon Takes Over Creative Control of James Bond

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

Stock market update for February 21, 2025.

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in five minutes. My name is Zadadmani, and today is Friday, February 21st. In today's episode, we tell you why the DOJ is investigating United Health and the impact that it's having on their stock price. We also tell you why Jeff Bezos might be the next James Bond villain. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out how Ferrari became the most valuable car company in Europe. All right. Let's go.

Well, after back-to-back record closes to start the week, stocks took a breather on Thursday with all three major indices finishing in the red. Both the S&P and NASDAQ dropped more than 0.4%. And I think Walmart might have been responsible for the drop yesterday. Walmart stock dropped more than 6% yesterday because of disappointing growth outlooks for this year, and that might have investors worried about consumer spending slowing down. We broke down Walmart's earnings and more detail on yesterday's show, go check that out if you missed it.

Now, you know what surprisingly isn't getting a lot of hype these days? Is Nvidia. Not many people are talking about this, but the stock is pretty much fully recovered from the massive drop it had in late January after Deep Seek wiped out like $600 billion from Nvidia's market cap. Since then, the stock has gone up more than 18% and I feel like it's gone totally under the radar.

I hope some of you guys bought the dip. Now, Nvidia is reporting earnings next week on Wednesday after the market close, and there's a lot at stake. And I feel like I say that every time Nvidia reports, If Nvidia comes through with another monster earnings, beating expectations across the board, like you have pretty much every quarter in the last two years, and the stock might rally and get back to all-time highs.

And if it fails to meet expectations, then it could tank and drag the rest of the market down with it. So as always, a lot is writing on Nvidia. And that's why we're going to be covering Nvidia's earnings in detail on this podcast. So if you haven't already, make sure you guys are subscribed to the podcast and share it with someone who might find it interesting as well. It's a great time to get subscribed. Let's run through some headlines.

And we have to start with United Health Group. United Health is reportedly under investigation by the DOJ for its billing practices. The civil fraud probe is looking into whether the company manipulates its records with questionable diagnosis that generate extra payment to its Medicare Advantage plan. You know, Medicare Advantage is a $450 billion a year program that allows private insurers to oversee Medicare benefits, and it was created under the idea that companies could perform provide health care more economically than the government could. If you've ever watched prices right, you've probably seen an ad for Medicaid or Advantage plans.

And these plans are very popular. They cover a majority of these 67 million seniors and disabled people that rely on Medicare. And the payout structure is such that puts more money in the insurer's pocket when patients are sicker. And that's where the questionable diagnoses come in. Now, the Wall Street Journal broke this story. And according to the report, United Health routinely diagnosed patients with diseases without providing treatment. and then sometimes they included diagnosis that were believed to be false or unfounded

by the patient's doctor all in an effort to boost their payouts from the Medicare Advantage program. I mean, that's some shady stuff right there. This follows a report by the Wall Street Journal in December that patients under the care of the United Health employee doctors experience a significant spike in lucrative diagnoses

after getting on United Health's Medicare Advantage plans. The program has come under fire by Congressional Medicare Advisors in a 2024 report that called out the payment system for being vulnerable to, manipulation and urged immediate action to reform it. So yeah, it looks like United Health might have been taking advantage of this program and the DOJ is now cracking down. I mean, it's been a tough go for United Health over the last few months. They've had added scrutiny on them ever since

their CEO, their insurance division got murdered in New York back in late November. Since then, people have come out about their bad experiences. Using United Health, the company's also facing a separate investigation by the DOJ for anti-competitive practices. So there's a lot going on at the company right now. It's come under a lot of scrutiny and that's putting a lot of pressure on The United Health stock is down more than 10% this morning in reaction to this news. All right, let's shift gears and talk about something less depressing. Amazon has taken creative control of the James Bond franchise. Actually, this might be depressing as well, depending on who you ask.

This all started back in 2021 when Amazon acquired MGM Studios for $8.5 billion. As part of that acquisition came in ownership stake in the Bond franchise. But they still didn't have full creative control of James Bond. That belonged to two siblings. Barbara Brockley and her brother Michael Wilson. They inherited the control of the Bond franchise from their father 30 years ago. And since then, they've had the final call on key decisions, such as when a new movie's going to come out,

the actor cast it as James Bond, and whether to commit to projects like a TV spinoff. But now those created decisions belong to Amazon. The Bond franchise will now be co-owned by Amazon and the two siblings, but Amazon gets to do whatever they want with the franchise, which probably means we're going to get hit with a ton of Bond-related movies and TV shows. This could either be great or Amazon could ruin James Bond. I guess we'll have to see.

I've seen some people throw out the idea that Jeff Bezos would make for a great Bond villain. You know, he's one of the richest people in the world. He has a giant yacht. He launches rockets into space. You know, he does have the right look and vibe, if you know what I mean. Maybe he'll make a cameo in the next movie. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Celsius stock is up big this morning after they announced the acquisition of an energy drink competitor, Alani Nu,

for $1.8 billion. Alani Niu was founded by Kathy Hearn. She's an influencer and she convinced other major influencers to market the product, including Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton. Now, this is a big move for SELCHA's because they've started to see their revenues decline. In fact, their sales dipped 4% in Q4. Now, both these energy drink companies, Celsius and Alani New, market themselves as a health and fitness product.

So this could be a good fit to help SELCIS kickstart their growth again. Investors seem to love it. Celsius stock is up more than 32%. on this news. Now on the flip side, shares of Block are falling after the parent company of Cash App and Square missed on earning estimates for the quarter. Square is the white payment system that you see at coffee shops that make you feel bad when you don't leave a 25% tip. They're dealing with some tough competition right now from platforms like Toast and Clover. And while Square is dealing with those challenges, the Cash app is taking steps to become an everything app. Cash app will be

integrating the Buy Now Pay Later platform after pay into their app this week. Block acquired after pay, in 2021 for like $29 billion. Surprise it took them this long to integrate it. So yeah, investors aren't loving the direction the block is going and their shares are down 9% on this news. Another stock having a tough morning is Rivian. Their shares are falling after the EV company provided a weak delivery guidance for 2025. Rivian expects to deliver between 46,000 and 51,000 vehicles for this year,

which is a decline from the 51,500 vehicles they delivered in 2024. The company, however, did report positive gross profit in Q4 for the first time. in its history, but that wasn't enough to save the stock. Rivian shares are down more than 8% this morning on this news. Let's wrap the show with the fun fact. Ferrari is the most valuable car company in Europe, worth more than Volkswagen, Mercedes-Bend, BMW, and Porsche. Ferrari's market cap is north of $90 billion,

and what's crazy is they delivered just under 14,000 cars last year. To put that into perspective, Volkswagen sold more than 9 million cars last year, and they only have a market cap of around $50 billion. Ferrari IPO about a decade ago, and their stock is nearly 10x, while other carmakers in Europe have struggled with weak demand because of increased competition from Chinese automakers.

But Ferrari is playing a different game than the other automakers. Ferrari sells super expensive cars with very limited supply. They're very exclusive, and they keep the supply low on purpose so they can charge a premium for their cars and keep their brand value high.

And look, this plan seems to be working so far. only they could bring this level of success to their F1 team. Maybe Lewis Hamilton will light it up this season. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. That's the rundown for this week. Another week in the books, we had stocks hit all-time highs this week. Not too much drama overall, though, but next week should be a great one. We got Nvidia earnings coming up.

I've been hyping it up all week, and I cannot wait. So make sure you guys are subscribed to the podcast to stay in the loop. And if you have like 15 extra seconds, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple or Spotify. leave us a comment on Spotify, voting today's Spotify poll. All of that engagement really does help us out and it helps other people find the show. Thank you guys so much for listening.

Shout out to Mike and Connor for all the help behind the scenes. See you guys back here on Monday. This is the rundown, your real-time resource for news events and trends in the markets. All views presented in the show reflect the opinions of the guests. You should not take any mention of a publicly traded security as recommendation to buy, sell, or hold that security.

Runddown guests are not financial advisors and are not affiliated with public holdings or subsidiaries. You should make your own financial and investment decisions or consult. Respect to professionals. Learn more at public.com disclosures. In partnership with Aida Mani, brokerage services for U.S. listed, registered securities are offered by open to the public investing Incorporated, member FINRA and SIPC.