5 Best Cheap Dividend Stocks To Buy Now

2. Elevance Health, Inc. (NYSE:ELV)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 82
P/E Ratio as of August 20: 17.24

Elevance Health, Inc. (NYSE:ELV) is an American health insurance company, previously known as Anthem. It currently pays a quarterly dividend of $1.48 per share and the stock has a dividend yield of 1.33%, as recorded on August 20. During its second quarter of 2022, the company distributed $350 million to shareholders through dividends, which makes it one of the best dividend stocks on our list.

At the end of the June quarter of 2023, 82 hedge funds in Insider Monkey’s database reported having stakes in Elevance Health, Inc. (NYSE:ELV), up from 81 in the preceding quarter. Their collective stake value is over $5.33 billion.

Madison Investments mentioned Elevance Health, Inc. (NYSE:ELV) in its Q2 2023 investor letter. Here is what the firm has to say:

“We purchased Elevance Health, Inc. (NYSE:ELV) and trimmed Marsh & McLennan and Arch Capital. Elevance is the largest for-profit Blue Cross Blue Shield plan in the country, supporting the largest domestic membership base across the managed care industry. While national scale is important, local scale is critical as well, given the localized nature of healthcare delivery. Elevance scores well on both fronts, giving it strong bargaining power with providers, lower customer acquisition costs, deep population health data and analytics, and the ability to offer attractive health benefit packages. All this combines to create a formidable moat for its business.

We also believe the management team is top-notch. Since joining Elevance from a senior leadership position at peer UnitedHealth Group, CEO Gail Boudreaux has further leveraged the company’s scale advantage by expanding its internal healthcare services capabilities through a newly formed business unit called Carelon. As the industry transitions to a reimbursement system that emphasizes patient outcomes over procedure or testing volume, data analytics will be a crucial tool in managing patient care. Carelon has become the repository for many of these data analytics and healthcare service capabilities, and it should be an attractive growth platform for many years to come. Concerns around a possible slowdown in government-sponsored programs in Medicare Advantage and managed Medicaid gave us an opportunity to invest at a good price.”