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Morgan Stanley thinks it’s time to buy shares of Elevance Health . The bank listed the stock as a top pick in a Tuesday note and reiterated an overweight rating on it. Morgan Stanley’s $585 price target implies roughly 24% upside from Monday’s $471.16 close. Morgan Stanley analyst Michael Ha said the health insurance company can shine in the broader field of managed care and forecast as much as 15% growth in earnings per share next year. ELV YTD mountain Elevance Health stock has slumped more than 8% so far this year. “All in all, we favorably view Elevance as the cleanest story in Managed Care with the quality of their long-term fundamental growth story having improved significantly over the past year with attractive idiosyncratic and underappreciated LT earnings growth drivers,” Ha said. Meanwhile, the analyst added, Elevance will also benefit from higher commercial pricing in the sector, which he forecast could add as much as 175 basis points worth of margin improvement going into 2024. “With early signs pointing to a strong 2024 commercial pricing environment across the industry (indicating potentially LDD price increases) AND following a year of disciplined commercial repricing efforts, we believe Elevance is primed to benefit in 2024 from next year’s robust commercial rate environment (with less risk of ELV membership attrition given price hardening across the industry),” he said. — CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed to this report.
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