EHealth Cuts FY Guidance

(RTTNews) - eHealth Inc (EHTH), the largest private health insurance exchange, on Wednesday said it now expects fiscal 2014 adjusted loss of $0.13 to $0.04 per share and revenues of $178 to $180 million. Earlier it expected adjusted earnings of $0.30 to $0.43 per share and revenues of $185 million to $194 million for the year.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect earnings of $0.05 per share on revenues of $187.2 million for the year. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

For the fourth quarter, the company expects adjusted loss of $0.56 to $0.47 per share and revenues of $43 million to $45 million. Analysts estimate a loss of $0.11 per share on revenues of $52.6 million for the quarter.

Gary Lauer, chief executive officer of eHealth, said that during the fourth quarter, the company spent considerably more on Medicare marketing than we planned.

Further Lauer said that in the company's Individual & Family Plan (IFP) business, submitted IFP applications fell short of expectationso.

"Because we've historically experienced consumer demand in our market increase around major application deadlines, we expect to see strong IFP application volumes during the second half of this Open Enrollment Period and especially in the first two weeks of February just before it ends on February 15th," Lauer said.