Centene

RANK24

A couple of strategic bets paid off for Centene over the past year. The health insurer dug in to the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces even when the Obama-era health law’s future was far from certain, and through April 2021 it had added 320,000 new members under the Biden administration’s expanded special enrollment period for those individual insurance exchanges. Centene’s 2020 revenues exceeded $111 billion, after executives accurately predicted that the COVID pandemic would bring about a windfall, with growing demand for coronavirus-related services across the nation. The question is how long that win streak can last. “This a year with unique drivers,” said CEO Michael Neidorff in late April 2021, “which we cannot be certain can continue throughout all of 2022.”