DaVita Inc.

DaVita Inc. is an American healthcare company that provides kidney dialysis and related laboratory services to patients with end-stage kidney disease across the United States and 14 other countries, generating $13.6 billion in revenue in fiscal 2025. The company operates approximately 2,657 outpatient dialysis centres in the U.S. and another 585 internationally, serving roughly 200,500 U.S. patients at any given time, and also runs an integrated kidney care business managing value-based care arrangements for about 66,000 risk-based patients.

This is a story about a durable oligopolistic franchise with non-discretionary demand that has spent the last decade converting its cash flow into an aggressive share-repurchase programme, shrinking its diluted share count from 154 million in 2019 to 75.9 million in 2025. The file turns on whether the core U.S. dialysis business can sustain its spread between revenue growth and cost inflation long enough for the buyback arithmetic to continue compounding — or whether commercial payor mix erosion, regulatory headwinds, and the uncertain trajectory of kidney disease incidence rates will compress that spread before the repurchases finish their work.

The stock traded near $190 at the time of writing — roughly 17 times trailing TTM earnings and 10.2 times trailing EBITDA on an enterprise basis. The market is pricing a continuation of the steady-state playbook, albeit at a more reasonable multiple than the mid-20s the stock commanded at its 2025 peak. The analysis that follows examines how much needs to go right for the compounding story to hold, and how much can go wrong.