Health Insurance Innovations Inc (NASDAQ:HIIQ) isn’t a huge stock by any means, but HIIQ stock holders are enjoying huge returns Tuesday morning.
If you’re not familiar with this little stock that could, HIIQ is a health insurer that develops, distributes and virtually administers health insurance plans and other products.
Coming in the tail end of earnings season, HIIQ surprised the Street with per-share earnings totaling 27 cents per share on revenues of $44.5 million. Wall Street analysts had HIIQ priced to deliver 6 cents (a 2-cent decline year-over-year) and $37.11 million in sales.
Didn’t expect sales to almost double? Join the club.
Driving this growth, Health Insurance Innovations saw record policies of 258,400 for a 128% increase YoY. HIIQ drew a record number of collections, $77 million, double the result in the year-ago quarter.
According to Health Insurance Innovations CEO Patrick McNamee:
“Our second quarter performance demonstrated continued strong demand for our products with exceptional execution” said Patrick McNamee, HIIQ’s Chief Executive Officer … AgileHealthInsurance.com, powered by the team at HealthPocket, delivered the strongest revenue growth of all channels. During the quarter, Agile sold approximately 16,000 STM policies and a record 2,500 supplemental dental and vision policies. Agile continues to be our largest distributor and will add new products this year to assure future growth.”
Shares of this mostly ignored stock have been trading in the sub-$4 range for the past few months before today’s monster move. HIIQ has averaged just around 80,000 shares daily, but made its move to around $4.70 on some 3 million shares by 11 a.m. With today’s gains factored in, Health Insurance Innovations still is just a $70 million company by market capitalization.
Bottom Line on HIIQ Stock
For the full year, HIIQ stock holders can now look forward to between 55 cents and 65 cents per share on sales ranging from $155 million to $165 million. The average analyst expects 43 cents a share on $145 million … though you can expect some revisions after this report.
Even after today’s huge move, HIIQ stock is still well off from the sole price target of $9. Yes, there is just one price target on Health Insurance Innovations stock, so trust that number — as well as the one buy and one hold rating from the two analysts covering the stock — at your own risk.
Maybe a couple more analysts flock to cover HIIQ after today’s move, but don’t hold your breath. This still is a small-volume stock that’s mired in a larger downtrend since coming public just a few years ago.
It’s a nice bit of relief for anyone who has been in the stock anytime before June of this year … and a likely exit point for many.
As of this writing, John Kilhefner did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
