Bellevue Medtech & Services (CH)

In September, the US jobs market continued to weaken. Meanwhile core inflation data was unchanged month-on-month, despite widespread expectations that the recently imposed import tariffs would lead to an uptick in inflation. Against this backdrop, the Federal Reserve lowered the target range for its overnight lending rate by 0.25 percentage points to 4.00%-4.25%, its first cut this year.

The total stock market advanced 2.6% in the month under review. The healthcare (+0.4%) and medtech and services (+0.5%) sectors also closed higher but could not keep up with the broader market, while the Bellevue Medtech & Services Fund (-0.9%) lagged its benchmark. Healthcare services providers contributed +3.0% to monthly fund performance, while medtech stocks had a negative impact of -3.9%.

McKesson (+12.0%), Veeva Systems (+10.0%), and HCA Healthcare (+4.9%) were performance drivers. McKesson upgraded its guidance for long-term earnings per share growth to 13%-16% on its Investor Day, which took investors by surprise. Veeva Systems announced that two more top-20 biopharma firms, Gilead Sciences and Bristol-Myers Squibb, had signed on to its new Vault CRM platform.

US health insurers such as Centene (+22.2%), UnitedHealth (+11.5%), Molina (+5.2%), and Elevance (+1.4%) made a positive contribution to the fund’s performance in September overall, but Humana (-14.5%) and Cigna (-4.3%) closed lower.

UnitedHealth announced that, based on a preliminary internal review, about 78% of its Medicare Advantage enrollees in 2027 would have health plans with high ratings of four stars or more. This is in line with the 2026 enrollment data but is better than many investors had feared. Health plans that earn at least four out of five stars receive annual bonus payments from the government.

Humana did not provide any information on the projected ratings of its health plans, but investors presumed that it would announce a lower percentage of four- or five-star plans than expected, which put the stock under pressure.

Among the fund’s medtech investments, only Medtronic (+2.8%) and Abbott (+0.4%) closed slightly higher and made a positive contribution to performance. Meanwhile fast-growing companies such as Boston Scientific (-8.0%), Intuitive Surgical (-6.1%), Stryker (-5.9%), and Edwards Lifesciences (-4.9%) weighed on both absolute and relative performance. Investor sentiment toward these stocks deteriorated over the month on worries about the pending third-quarter reporting season, which we believe are unfounded.

Life sciences tools companies Danaher (-4.4%) and Thermo Fisher (-2.0%) also detracted from absolute and relative performance, which reflected uncertainty about the outcome of discussions on lowering drug prices in the US (most-favored-nation pricing model).

All performance data in CHF/AA shares.

We see considerable upside potential in the healthcare services segment, specifically for hospital operators, health tech companies, and US health insurers. Hospital operators should benefit from high patient volumes and an only moderate increase in payroll costs. We expect solid member growth at health insurers in 2026 in addition to higher margins, particularly in Medicare Advantage and Medicaid business lines. Continued high US Treasury yields could also have an accretive effect on earnings.

Looking back on the pleasing second-quarter results of medtech companies and our discussions with many medtech executives at the Wells Fargo Healthcare Conference in Boston in September, we expect solid volume growth in surgical procedures during the third and fourth quarters of 2025. The resulting economies of scale along with the weak USD and lower-than-threatened tariff rates are expected to give EPS growth in the medtech sector an additional boost going forward.

Moreover, the approval and launch of major new products is expected to generate additional sales growth for medtech companies, with a likewise positive impact on their valuations. Examples here are Abbott’s Lingo, Libre Rio, Libre 3, TriClip, and AVEIR products, Boston Scientific’s Farapulse PFA system and Watchman FLX Pro device, and the new da Vinci 5 surgical robot from Intuitive Surgical.