OK, that’s not really a thing, but given the extent of UnitedHealthcare’s breach earlier this year, it could be. UnitedHealth suffered a devastating ransomware attack in February, when hackers shut down its Change Healthcare subsidiary (acquired in 2022). Since Change Healthcare processes billing and insurance claims for a large swath of the healthcare industry, the attack left pharmacies and hospitals across the United States unable to fill prescriptions, book procedures, and otherwise operate as normal. 

Anyway, back to today’s s earnings release for second-quarter 2024. UnitedHealth reported a total of $98.8 billion in revenue (up 6.4 percent from the year-ago period) and $4.42 billion in net income (down 21.8 percent).

The good stuff, however, was in the non-GAAP disclosures about the cyber attack. UnitedHealth broke the numbers down into “direct response costs” (that is, money the company paid out to help defray costs of the breach) and “business disruption impacts” (reduced revenue from the attack). Take a look at Figure 1, below, from the earnings release.

As you can see, total cyber attack impacts (that is, higher costs and missed revenue) were $1.1 billion for this quarter alone. That’s up from $872 million in the first quarter, which also means total impacts were $1.98 billion for the first half of the year. 

But wait, there’s more! Further down the release, UnitedHealth also estimates the attack’s total hit to EPS, for both this period and the full 2024 calendar year. See Figure 2, below. (Look for the bottom line shaded in blue.)

You may need to squint, but total hit to EPS for this quarter was $0.92 and estimated total hit for the year is $1.90 to $2.05.

Of course, also remember that you don’t need to squint at images and tables, even in our easy-to-use Disclosures & Footnote Query tool. If you simply leave your cursor over the table you’re studying (Figure 2 appears on Page 8 of UnitedHealth’s supplemental financial data), an icon automatically appears that lets you download the entire table as a neatly formatted Excel spreadsheet. You can then conduct your own analysis with the data as you see fit.

We do still have questions about the UnitedHealth breach itself. For example, the company said it extended $8.1 billion in interest-free loans to various parties disrupted by the breach. Well, who were those parties? What will they disclose in their earnings releases over the next few weeks? We’re not sure yet, but we have a reminder to ourselves to check.

UnitedHealth is also likely to face significant regulatory pressures from the Securities and Exchange Commission (our brother-in-arms Radical Compliance has a long post about potential SEC enforcement against UnitedHealth if that’s your bag), the Federal Trade Commission, federal healthcare regulators, and lord knows who else. 

It’s a big mess. The devil is in the details. Calcbench has those details indexed and ready for you.