DaVita enters the week after earnings on a completely different footing than it started — a Deutsche Bank upgrade to Buy with a $220 target has reset the debate on a stock that most of the Street had treated as dead money.
Q1 results dropped Tuesday evening and they were unambiguous. Adjusted EPS of $2.87 beat the $2.32 consensus by a wide margin. Revenue of $3.416 billion cleared estimates of $3.356 billion. Full-year 2026 adjusted EPS guidance was lifted to $14.10–$15.20, versus the prior range of $13.60–$15.00 and well above the $13.98 market estimate. The stock responded — up 1.9% on Wednesday and 4.6% on the week to close at $157.04, extending a 7.9% one-month run.
Deutsche Bank's Pito Chickering moved swiftly. The upgrade to Buy from Hold came with a target of $220 — up sharply from the prior $126 — putting Chickering's call roughly 40% above the current price. That move alone dominates the analyst picture this week, particularly because it arrived the morning after a strong beat-and-raise. The broader Street remains more cautious. UBS carries a Buy with a $190 target (raised from $186 in February), while Barclays sits at Equal-Weight with a $158 target and BofA has an Underperform rating. The consensus mean price target of $167 sits only modestly above the current price, meaning most of the Street has yet to reprice the improved guidance trajectory. The factor scores corroborate the EPS story: DaVita ranks in the 79th percentile for earnings surprise and the 76th percentile for forward EPS growth, with 30-day EPS momentum in the 72nd percentile.
Short positioning tells a more nuanced story than the bullish surface implies. SI has climbed to 8.6% of free float — up roughly 7.3% over the past month — which places genuine short conviction in the mix even after a strong earnings print. That build began in mid-April, when shares outstanding on loan jumped from around 5.6 million to 6.2 million in the space of a week. The shorts didn't flee after the Q1 beat: positions held steady into and through the print. Official FINRA data, based on the April 15 settlement, put the figure at 5.91 million shares with days-to-cover of 8.6, reinforcing that a meaningful unwind would require time. Borrowing, however, remains cheap at 0.44% APR. The borrow market is comfortably loose — availability has room to absorb new short demand without squeezing existing positions. The ORTEX short score has drifted higher through the week, reaching 67.5 — consistent with growing directional conviction on the short side, even if the trade has not paid off this week.
Options sentiment has shifted decisively in the bulls' favour. The put/call ratio hit 0.791 on Tuesday — the lowest reading of the past 52 weeks and nearly two standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.87. In practical terms, call buyers are dominating the options market to a degree not seen all year. That's the kind of positioning reset that often follows an earnings beat and a high-profile analyst upgrade arriving in the same 24-hour window. It contrasts sharply with where the PCR sat just two weeks ago, when it was trading north of 0.89 and the earnings release hadn't yet catalysed any directional shift.
The ownership picture carries its own subplot. Berkshire Hathaway — holding roughly 45% of DaVita — sold 1.22 million shares on May 1 at around $149.84, raising approximately $182.7 million. That's a notable trim from Warren Buffett's vehicle, even if the position remains the dominant one on the register. A cluster of executive sells on March 13 — the CFO, COO, Chief Legal Officer and Chief Compliance Officer all disposing of shares at $150.72 — adds to the insider-selling narrative over the 90-day window, where net insider activity totals $204.7 million in sales. Berkshire's trim came before the earnings beat and before the stock cleared $157; the post-print price may colour how the market interprets any follow-through selling.
The next scheduled earnings event is June 4, which is unusually close — less than four weeks away. Between now and then, the question the tape will be working through is whether the consensus price target, currently lagging the Deutsche Bank call by a wide margin, migrates higher as other analysts are forced to respond to the guidance raise.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open DVA on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
